Throughout almost its entire existence, our species roamed the planet, living off hunting and gathering in small groups, moving to new areas with favorable climates, and leaving when conditions became unbearable. For hundreds of thousands of years, our ancestors harnessed fire to cook their food and keep warm. They crafted tools, shelters, clothing, and jewelry—yet their possessions were limited to what they could carry. Occasionally, they encountered other hominids, such as Neanderthals, and sometimes engaged in sexual relations with them.
For tens of thousands of years, history unfolded without being written down. Then, about 10,000 years ago, everything began to change.
In some places, people started to cultivate plants. They began to stay longer in one location. They constructed villages and cities. Lesser-known geniuses invented writing, money, the wheel, and gunpowder. In just a few millennia—a blink in evolutionary terms—cities, empires, and factories proliferated across the globe. Today, Earth is encircled by satellites and crisscrossed with internet cables. Nothing like this had ever happened before.
Archaeologists and anthropologists have worked to explain this remarkably rapid transformation. Their narrative often suggests a sort of trap: once people began farming, it became impossible to turn back, and humanity was swept up in a cascade of social complexity that inexorably led to hierarchy, inequality, and environmental destruction.
Rethinking What Society Can Be
This grim view of civilization’s advent has persisted over time. However, the more societies are studied, the less plausible this version of events appears. Faced with unsettling evidence, we are compelled to revisit the history of our origins. In doing so, we must also rethink what a society can be.
Homo sapiens, our species, has existed for about 300,000 years—give or take a few millennia. For almost all of that time (including during the upheaval of glacial periods), we were hunter-gatherers. So why abandon a way of life that worked so well for so long?
This is the foundational question at the heart of human civilization. “There is no obvious reason why people began to live in villages and domesticate [plants and animals],” notes Laura Dietrich of the Austrian Institute of Archaeology in Vienna.
“It represents one of the most remarkable breaks in human history.”
Nevertheless, even discussing this topic can be challenging. Western thinkers have traditionally regarded modern industrial society as inherently superior to that of hunter-gatherers, which has skewed their judgment. “We can’t assume that it’s always a good thing, nor even that it’s always a bad thing,” says Daniel Hoyer, project director at Seshat: Global History Databank, which converts vast amounts of information on past human societies into a form suitable for research on these questions.
Civilization, a Faustian Pact?
Moreover, much of the terminology associated with this transition comes with unpleasant implications regarding race, gender, and empire. The term “civilization,” in particular, carries obvious connotations, especially when contrasted with “barbarians,” “savages,” and “primitive.”
Despite these difficulties, anthropologists have pieced together a narrative that helps explain this massive upheaval in our evolution. The logic was that people in particularly fertile regions attempted agriculture because it seemed like a good idea—and then they discovered that it was impossible to go back. By producing more food, they triggered a population growth that forced them to seek ever more sustenance. Those able to do so controlled the grain supply and became the first leaders and emperors of societies that had been egalitarian until then. To maintain control, they created or mastered everything that constitutes a state, such as writing, laws, and armies.
Considered from this perspective, civilization has both advantages and drawbacks. It brings benefits such as literature, medicine, and rock music, but it also has a cost, including inequality, taxation, and deadly pandemics transmitted from livestock. Like Doctor Faust, our ancestors struck a deal with the devil. The history of civilization is a tragicomedy adorned with a touch of the power of a great myth.
Yet increasingly, evidence suggests that this narrative may be little more than fiction.
The Mysteries of Göbekli Tepe
The first issue is that this version provides a distorted image of hunter-gatherer societies, which were, in fact, much more variable and complex than previously thought. An ideal example of this misunderstanding is the site of Göbekli Tepe, perched atop a hill in southern Turkey. Beginning in the mid-1990s, excavations at the site uncovered circular enclosures, each containing several-meter-high T-shaped stone pillars, some adorned with carved animals or other symbols. Rectangular buildings framed these enclosures.
This would be unremarkable if Göbekli Tepe did not date back 11,500 to 10,000 years—before the advent of agriculture. “Here, there are no domesticated plants or animals,” emphasizes Laura Dietrich. Thus, it’s evidence that hunter-gatherers sometimes created monumental architecture, something once thought inseparable from agricultural societies.
We cannot know for certain why Göbekli Tepe was constructed. It apparently was not a living space: there’s no water source or evidence of permanent hearths. Thus, few people would have lived there permanently, Dietrich continues. However, the stone pillars, or megaliths, are too large to have been transported by small groups. “The primary evidence we have suggests that groups from other regions gathered here to do something, sharing a common idea,” she adds.
This common idea may have been religious in nature or linked to some vague ritual. Imagery has been interpreted as masculine: some of the carved animals bear penises, while no female representations have been identified. A few human skulls have been found, but their sex is difficult to determine. There are also stone mortars that were used to grind wild grains into porridge and to produce large quantities of beer. Some suggest the site hosted groups of men engaging in initiation rites.
“Archaeologists did not realize that something like Göbekli Tepe could exist,” asserts Laura Dietrich. Yet since its discovery, megaliths dating to the same period have been found at nearby sites like Karahan Tepe, along with other types of monuments left by hunter-gatherers, such as the massive mounds at Poverty Point in Louisiana, USA. These are striking examples of hunter-gatherers’ ability to act in surprisingly complex ways. And there are more.
In recent years, studies of modern hunter-gatherer groups have also upended perceptions of their social structures. “Generally, people imagine that hunter-gatherers lived in small, nomadic, relatively egalitarian, and cooperative groups,” comments Adrian Jaeggi from the University of Zurich in Switzerland. “But in reality, there are many examples of what some define as ‘complex hunter-gatherers.’ These people could be quite sedentary and politically stratified. There might have been a hereditary ruling class, for instance, where the chief’s position was inherited. They knew slavery and warfare.”
Was Agriculture a “Mistake”?
While many questions remain unanswered, one thing is clear. The traditional version of history—that complex societies emerged with the development of agriculture—does not hold true. At least, not all the time. Hunter-gatherers were capable of forming large groups, conducting rituals, and building sophisticated monuments. Agriculture was not a prerequisite.
So why did people take up farming in the first place? This question also represents a significant source of confusion. It may be useful to imagine what early farms looked like, suggests Amy Bogaard from the University of Oxford. Forget about today’s large industrial farms; we’re closer to gardening here. “You need to think in radically different spatial terms, but also consider a more intense concentration of resources, and the potential for improved operating conditions that could occur on such a small scale.” And remember that the first farmers were not only farmers.
“Gathering, hunting, fishing, and bird trapping all continued simultaneously.”
The obvious reason that might have pushed people towards agriculture could be the need to produce more food, or at least to ensure a more predictable source of sustenance. However, there is little evidence supporting this. In fact, some have even proposed the opposite.
Jared Diamond from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is famous for characterizing agriculture as “the worst mistake in human history,” citing evidence that farmers were shorter than hunter-gatherers, suffered more often from malnutrition and disease, and lived shorter lives. But these are generalizations based on specific cases. The evidence available today encourages us to consider what was occurring at the regional level.
Radically Different Experiences
Let’s consider the case of Çatalhöyük in Turkey, where a group of farmers lived in a densely populated village 5,000 to 7,100 years ago. “It’s somewhat of an ideal database, an experiment lasting 1,500 years, which was quite successful,” highlights Amy Bogaard. “There were demographic ups and downs, but the community had a diverse cultivation system, exploiting five or six different cereals, a comparable number of legumes, and they engaged extensively in food gathering.”
In contrast, agriculture in Britain had a rocky start. By the time local populations adopted it, many staple crops had been abandoned, leaving only a few types of grains. This led to an unstable cycle of prosperity and collapse, with populations booming for a few centuries, then declining and dispersing when harvests were poor. “It’s simply not diverse enough,” emphasizes Amy Bogaard. “There is not a sufficient variety of species to rebound between these inevitable peaks and declines.”
These radically different agricultural experiences might explain why broader databases do not indicate an overall decline in human height. A study published this year by Jay Stock and colleagues from Western University in Ontario, Canada, compiled data from 3,507 skeletons in Europe, Asia, and North Africa, dating from 34,300 years ago to the present. The average height decreased early on, long before agriculture arrived, until about 6,000 years ago, when it began to rise again—possibly following the development of dairy farming.
It cannot be claimed that agriculture equated to nutritional gains. But it also does not seem to have been a trap. “There are numerous examples of groups that adopted and then abandoned agriculture,” says David Wengrow from University College London. Among others, in the Southwestern United States, where, prior to European contact, peoples lived by cultivating maize and beans rather than gathering. “Sometimes, this happened even during prehistory,” he adds. “Stonehenge and other Neolithic monuments in the British Isles were erected by populations that adopted cereal farming from continental Europe and then reverted to gathering hazelnuts as their primary plant food source.”
Attachment to a Place
Perhaps the development of agriculture had sociopolitical reasons. Some sources suggest that the notion of private property needed to exist. Agriculture may also have had cultural explanations. “People want to stay in a given location,” says Amy Bogaard. “They feel attached to that part of the landscape, and they do what it takes to make it ecologically plausible.” Activities like burials, which allow people to remain near their deceased relatives, support this.
Nonetheless, one enigma remains. Why did populations in disparate places like Mesopotamia, northern China, and South America all turn to agriculture within a few millennia?
The answer may lie in climate change. During the period leading up to approximately 10,000 years ago (the Pleistocene), temperatures varied significantly over decades and centuries. “A nomadic lifestyle based on hunting and gathering is the best way to live when conditions are so unpredictable,” asserts Adrian Jaeggi.
Since then, during our era (the Holocene), a more predictable climate has allowed agriculture to thrive. However, humans did not begin to farm and build complex societies solely during the Holocene. On the contrary, “it has always existed,” states Daniel Hoyer. Simply, humans could not adopt a permanent sedentary agricultural lifestyle as long as the climate remained unstable.
In summary, we now know that hunter-gatherer societies were much more diverse than previously thought, some organized hierarchically and building monuments. We also know that agriculture was not a trap. We cannot claim that it was entirely beneficial or, conversely, wholly detrimental: it depends on where and how it was practiced. We now need to explain why certain societies became incredibly more complex: why they stratified socially, with powerful leaders and the rapid invention of writing, money, and new technologies.
An Ambitious Database
It is challenging to untangle the various ways societies have changed and to distinguish causes from effects. The Seshat project, named after the Egyptian goddess of writing and knowledge, is among the most ambitious in this field. “We have compiled a gigantic database of the past,” announces Daniel Hoyer. This database records changes in societies at hundred-year intervals, using a range of variables to assess complexity. Launched in 2011, Seshat has begun to produce some astonishing findings.
The first major study, published in 2017, examined whether societies tended to develop similarly or if each followed a unique path. The Seshat team studied 414 societies over the last 10,000 years. For each, it had data on 51 variables, ranging from spatial scale and population density to levels of administrative hierarchy, the use of writing, and the construction of public systems benefiting all, such as irrigation networks. It concluded that the process of complexity appears similar across the board. “They acquire these characteristics all at once, and this applies to all cultures over time,” emphasizes Daniel Hoyer.
Five years later, Seshat researchers sought to understand what triggers societal change. They compiled a list of 17 possibilities, such as agriculture, geographic scale, and social hierarchy, and analyzed the data by calculating that if a factor was the trigger, it logically should precede the others. Their study suggests that agriculture did indeed play a role, but the most significant factor was warfare.
“It’s the intensity of military technology, the threat from other societies, their power, their ability to wipe you out,” describes Daniel Hoyer. The emergence of iron weapons and cavalry during the first millennium BCE was particularly crucial.
However, Timothy Kohler from Washington State University questions whether warfare is the primary driver of this transformation. In 2020, his colleagues and he analyzed Seshat’s data themselves. They found societies grew in demographic and geographic scale, but only until they reached a certain threshold. The initial expansion often occurred through the forceful annexation of neighboring entities. However, to surpass that threshold, a society had to develop “information-processing” systems like writing. “Conflict is important because it increases scale,” Kohler believes, “but it’s not all about war.”
Many Prejudices
One key finding from the Seshat team has sparked even greater controversy. Based on earlier research, it was thought that religious beliefs could serve as a glue for societies and that the concept of “moralizing gods,” who closely supervise right and wrong, was a central element in the formation of large states. However, in 2019, the Seshat team concluded that belief in moralizing deities only emerged when societies were already large and thus could not have served as a driving force.
In response, one article challenged this hypothesis. “Their data series lacked many values,” and each had been coded as evidence of the absence of moralizing gods, charges Rachel Spicer from the London School of Economics. Seshat subsequently retracted its paper. Nevertheless, the team reanalyzed its data and published the same conclusions.
For some researchers, this episode exemplifies an underlying problem with Seshat, whose data coding is plagued by numerous biases. In David Wengrow’s eyes from University College, this is an unforgivable flaw. For example, he believes the conclusions about war are primarily a product of this method. “If, as this Seshat study does, you start by defining complexity in terms of technologies of violence, control, and extraction, then logically, you will conclude that these technologies are the engines of complexity.”
What this clearly demonstrates, without a shadow of a doubt, is that understanding the emergence of civilization is complicated. Where once we relied on a narrative of causes and effects that explained everything, in recent years, archaeologists and anthropologists have turned away from this approach. “We do not believe societies evolve linearly, transitioning from hunter-gatherers to ultimately complex societies through a few steps along the way,” comments Stefani Crabtree from Utah State University.
A Richer Scenario Than Previously Thought
This idea has become increasingly evident as more data have been gathered. “Much of what we knew about world prehistory came from the Near East and Europe,” acknowledges Jennifer Kahn from the College of William & Mary in Virginia.
“Now, we have much more archaeological data about what is happening in other parts of the world, and we are witnessing much greater variability.”
This is exemplified by the Polynesian societies of the Society Islands in the Pacific, which she has studied for years. Around 1650, a religious cult emerged that limited the capacity for warfare to a handful of chiefs, who then encompassed smaller potentates within their domains. In other words, while warfare played a role in the birth of complex systems, so too did religion.
The takeaway message is far removed from the previous vision we had of civilization. “There is no single recipe for how societies become more complex,” declares Jennifer Kahn. In other words, the scenario is richer and more ingenious than previously thought. Understanding its twists and hidden meanings not only sheds new light on our past but may also help us build better societies in the future.
Moreover, some, like David Wengrow, rejoice in the exuberant and creative diversity of societal forms. In fact, he goes even further, urging us to rethink the very meaning of social complexity. “We could choose to define complexity rather in terms of kinship systems, ecological resilience, and artistic creativity,” he enthuses. “And in that case, I believe the indigenous people of Ambrym Island [in Vanuatu] could top the list, while European societies would rank much lower.”
Michael Marshall
