In another stunning discovery that's not really all that stunning, archaeologist in combination with other scientist have discovered that the neolithic people in what is now Germany were feeding infants milk at least as far back as 7,000 years ago.
I guess I never thought of this topic before, but given that I think pretty much every culture that keeps livestock does this, well. . .
Not that it's not an important. It is. It's just not that surprising. If semi aboriginal people feed infants milk now, why wouldn't they have done so 7,000 years ago?
The more frustrating things in these reports in the ongoing reporting that continues to present the shift to agriculture as one in which John Smith, Neolithic dude, came home one day and said something like "Martha! I've got it! Let's become farmers, build a house, get rid of this tent, and give up hunting and gathering".
We know that didn't happen that way.
Just as somebody whose been around farming would suspect, the whole "shift" isn't so much a real shift as much as it was a shift in emphasis. Early on aboriginal people actually did some cultivation, just as they still do today (why we ignore the today in such analysis is mysterious). Then over time they came to be less aboriginal and rely more on their crops and livestock, but they never actually gave up hunting or gathering.
Indeed, the only places where hunting and gathering were much reduced are those places where the development of agriculture managed to put a class in power that didn't farm. Those classes universally operated on the "everything is mine" thesis, and kept the game for themselves while expropriating a percentage of the crops for themselves as well. When those classes fell, as they did over time, hunting and gathering tended to resume, save for urbanites who can't avail themselves of nature.
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