Chapters 4 and 5

Green History of the World,
by Clive Ponting

Composed by:
Scott Cameron
Pamela Cone
Chris Campbell
Carol Selton

We suggest the following music and films to accompany our summary.
Music: Paul Winter's Winter Solstice, George Winston's Fall into Winter and Beethoven's Symphony Number 6, The Pastoral.
Films: Soylent Green starring Charleton Heston and Silent Running starring Bruce Dern.

Chapter 4: The First Great Transition

Before Agriculture

For 2,000,000 years humans mostly depended on hunting and gathering for their food. With the invention of agriculture, complex societies emerged which in turn caused an increase in population.

10,000 years ago estimated population 4,000,000
7,000 years ago estimated population 5,000,000
3,000 years ago estimated population 50,000,000
2,500 years ago estimated population 100,000,000
1,800 years ago estimated population 200,000,000
RIGHT NOW World Population Clock

The transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture was gradual.
Hunting:
random hunting of a herd ==> controlled predation ==>
herd following ==> loose herding ==> close herding
Gathering:
collecting wild plants ==> tending wild plants through cultivation
==> domestication of crops

There are many explanations for the advent of agriculture. It is likely that population pressure forced people to get more food out of a smaller area of land.

First agricultural communities

It's hard to tell exactly when agriculture started. Archaeological food remains don't indicate whether food was wild or domesticated, and early tool remains are similar for agricultural and non-agricultural communities.

Agriculture appeared first in south-west Asia. Once food was more readily available due to the cultivation of plants and controlled herds, groups settled and became sedentary. By 6500 BC, towns developed and by 4500 BC, cities developed. Agriculture appeared next in China, and then Mesoamerica. By 2000 BC all the major plants and animals that we consume today were domesticated. None of these agricultural communities were in touch with each other until the Islamic trading between south-east Asia, the Near East and the Mediterranean areas around 600 AD. Trading began between the Americas, Europe and Australia around 1500 AD.

The effects of agriculture on the communities

In south-west Asia, agriculture brought surplus food so some members of the community no longer needed to be farmers. Soon there were potters and toolmakers, and eventually priests, soldiers, administrators and intellectuals. The surplus of food also led to the ownership of food resources (previously, everyone shared everything; no one possessed food).

South-west Asian communities became more and more organized as they learned to take advantage of their resources. There are several developments that prompted further organization: the population eventually invented irrigation in Mesopotamia because they ran out of good farmland, and by 3000 BC communities transported and distributed food.

Eventually, wealth and power distinctions created classes in Mesopotamia. In turn, the communities developed a preoccupation with war. This was possible because the communities were more organized, ownership was defined, and metal and the wheel fostered better fighting techniques. War was not the only result of the transition to a class-based society; religious temples were built, craftsmen created art, and writing and astronomy laid the foundation for further important advances.

Other areas eventually experienced growth similar to that of Mesopotamia. Development in the Nile valley was different because flooding of the Nile eliminated the need for irrigation. Hierarchical societies developed in the Indus Valley, China, Japan and Hawaii at varied rates. In Teotihuacan, people created floating gardens and used crop rotation. In most of these places, the changes associated with the growth of agriculture ultimately caused self-destruction of the communities as well as indelible damage to the ecosystem...


Chapter 5: Destruction and Survival


The Formula For Disaster; Agriculture and Overpopulation

There is a simple formula for disaster: successful civilizations produce surplus food which allows the rise of culture, civil and military hierarchies. These institutions vastly increase demands on the ecosystem for food and energy that outstrip the local ecosystem's ability to sustain. What follows is an inevitable downward cycle of diminishing returns resulting from over-irrigation of lands, leading to rising of water tables and the salinization of the land and a consequent fall in the production of the agricultural output leading to eventual shortfalls in surpluses, starvation and the demise of the culture. Examples of this are the cities of Sumer and the Mayan civilization in South America.

Deforestation

Adding to and exacerbating this agricultural catastrophe of over-irrigation is the twin trend of deforestation for fuel and for the creation of more arable land for food production. The result is man's inevitable destruction of the very land he intends to exploit for his own survival. The Indus Valley, China and several areas of Japan are examples of this.
Ancient pre-history civilizations are not the only victims of these trends. This process has continued unabated from Roman times to the present and points to the Cedars of Lebanon deforestation right down to the present day in the Mediterranean in Greece, Italy and other European countries.

A Lesson in Balance Undone

Egypt offers a tragic example of more or less successful integration of man and nature, which lasted there for almost seven thousand years. Sustainable use of nature, then, is possible. Utilizing the natural flooding cycle of the Nile, man had managed to live successfully with this cycle and to create flourishing civilizations.

However, this was "maintained only as long as there were only limited modifications to the flood regime"(pg85). Notwithstanding the general overall decreasing trend for rainfall in the highlands upriver due to the destruction of that ecosystem, the trend was forever broken with the construction of the Aswan Dam and the breaking of the nutrient-supplying floods over the land.


The Bottom Line

The conclusion is striking. If humankind does not change its pattern of self-destruction, our fate will be like that of all of the societies described above. It is clearly a choice that we as a global community must make, not as a group of individual cultures, but as a species inhabiting the same planet.