The World in 10,000 BC

In 10,000 BC, the topography of the Earth was much as is today. There have of course been plenty of “small” changes since that time: the English Channel had yet to divide the British Isles from the rest of Europe (that was to happen in about 7000 BC), and the coastlines of China and Mesopotamia were different (by some hundreds of miles in places!) to today, but the shape of the continents and most islands would have been easily recognizable to modern man. For the past 12,000 years or so, we have been living in a period of comparative topographical stability, which may be coming to an end.

Across the continents, the basic distribution of human races was much as it would be until about AD 1500 – until, that is, the Europeans ventured forth across the oceans. The Mongoloid peoples lived in eastern Asia, with an off-shoot in the Americas; the Black races inhabited Africa south of the Sahara; the Caucasoids lived in Europe, western and southern Asia and northern Africa; and the aborignals lived in Australia and New Guinea.

Socially speaking, however, the world of 10,000 BC was very remote from that of today. For a start, it was an empty world. There were perhaps ten million humans in total. All were hunter gatherers– that is, they hunted animals and gathered wild plants for their sustenance.

A Changing World

The world of 10,000 BC, however, was changing. It was changing climatically, getting warmer, and had been for several thousand years. The last Ice Age had started to retreat in about 17000 BC; and would continue to do so until about 7,000 BC. For a further few thousand years more certain regions would experience climatic changes associated with this warming. Notably the lush grasslands of northern Africa would gradually give way to the greatest desert on Earth, the Sahara.

The world was changing in another way, too. Humans were beginning to acquire capabilities that would eventually lead them to re-fashion much of the planet’s surface to meet their own particular needs.

In pre-agricultural, hunter gatherer societies, it takes thousands of acres to feed one family. In one well documented case, a population of 2,000-4,000 hunter-gatherers were estimated to be roaming over an area of about 25,000 square miles. This population was grouped into bands of about 50 individuals, and the average population density was no more than 10 people per square mile.

Farming, however, concentrates edible plants and animals into a much smaller area of land, ensuring that a given area of land could support many more people. In early agricultural society it took about 25 acres of land to feed one family. The much greater concentration of population that resulted meant that more stable settlements could be formed.

The Origins of Farming

Evidence for the harvesting of wild cereal grasses dates to around 10,000 BC in the Middle East; and the first flint sickles to have been found probably came from this period. However, there is no evidence of cultivation of the soil. So far, the earliest traces of cultivation seem to come from South East Asia, also from around 10,000 BC, where gardens of large peas, beans, cucumbers and water chestnuts seem to have been grown.

It is in the Middle East, however, that the crucial developments occurred (according to our current knowledge), when cereals such as wild emmer and barley, which flourished in the area, were deliberately grown and bred by humans. This breakthrough had occurred in Palestine and southern Turkey by 9000 BC. Almost immediately, sizeable settlements begin to appear, as at Jericho.

While the domestication of selected grasses was taking place, something similar was occurring with some animals. The first traces of sheep-keeping go back to around 9000 BC, in northern Iraq. Within a thousand years or so, goats, pigs and cattle had been added to the list. Once domesticated, these animals were bred to improve their usefulness to humans, and soon they were yielding not only meat for food and skin for clothing, but also milk for additional nutrition.

New Technologies

By 7000 BC, pottery was being made in Middle Eastern villages. This is an important marker, because pottery is associated with truly settled life – its weight, bulk and fragility make it unsuitable for the nomadic way of life. It also requires firing at high temperatures, a technique involving large brick-built kilns. The early potters built up their pots by adding coils of clay, layer upon layer.

Another indication of settled farming is the appearance of ploughs. Early ploughs were no more than digging sticks and hoes, used by people to prepare the ground for cultivation. The lightly scratched soil would soon become exhausted, and the farmers had constantly to clear new ground. They set fire to the stumps and brush that was left over from cutting the trees, and this had the added effect of leaving the soil rich in potash and lime. Once cleared and fired, the new land was able to give several years of good harvests, and after it had ceased to do so, was left waste as the farmers moved on to another area to clear and fire. This primitive approach is known as “slash and burn” or “Swidden” farming.

The two-man plough - one man pulling on a rope in front, the other pressing the plough’s point into the ground - made its appearance in the Middle East around 7000 BC. Later, a cross-beam was added for greater rigidity and control.

Eventually, from about 4000 BC, the use of cattle transformed ploughing, making it possible to cultivate larger areas and deeper soils. The castration of bulls to turn them into oxen seems to have first happened in northern Iraq at about the same time, 4000 BC, and this also aided ploughing. A little later, the invention of the yoke in Mesopotamia meant that two oxen could be bound firmly together to pull much heavier ploughs. These developments would have allowed increasingly intensive farming, as the deeper the ground was turned the more slowly it became exhausted. Also, cattle and other animal droppings would have helped fertilize the soil.

The Spread of Farming

Modern genetic techniques suggest that agriculture was largely spread by the slow migration of cultivators. The farming “frontier” seems to have pushed outwards into hunter gatherer territory at the rate of about one mile per year. It therefore took several millennia to spread throughout western and southern Asia, and across northern Africa and Europe. It seems that quite separate centres of farming appeared in China (based on millet) and South East Asia (based on rice), and formed the nuclei of different farming expansions. Whatever the case, by 3500 BC most human beings were farmers, and would remain so until the Twentieth century.

Article by Peter Britton. © TimeMaps 2007.
Last updated: 5th June 2007