[Graeme]

Interesting article though I don't necessarily agree with it. Why the writer had to explain husbandry I don't understand? Agriculture took place in the Middle East because of some sort of impetus. My guess is climate change as in a gradual drying of precipitation. The increasing aridity would have meant loss of hunted animals which would have moved on or reduced in number and loss of plant species to gather. In addition there would be greater competition for those animal and plant resources. I think it is not an accident that agriculture and the domestication of animals took place in those places where it is found. Usually arid flat lands with a large broad river fed by snowcaped mountains far away. The soils near the river would be fertile, readily grow grain bearing grass species, be re fertilised by the silt carried by the annual flood of the river, and water from the river could easily be moved in channels to irrigate otherwise dry land. Mesopotamia, the Nile Valley, the Indus Valley and the Yangtze loess lands are examples of dry flat lands serviced by flooding rivers fed from high mountain snowcaps or springs. So I would say that agriculture was inevitable in those places or no one could live there by hunting or gathering.

Agriculture is more time consuming and the diet less varied or rich in nutrients than that from hunting and gathering but it does maintain life and produces more food to feed more people per km of land than does hunting and gathering. Smaller territories are needed for agriculture and not everyone needs to be involved in producing food. So specialisation of tasks or skill development can take place that is totally unrelated to food production. The writer seems to forget that agriculturalists still hunted and gathered wild foods to supplement their diets. The agriculturalists did not just eat grains but animal and plant products they husbanded or hunted/gathered.

I don't understand the writer's notion of sexual equality. The hunters and gatherers had sexually defined occupations as did the Australian Aborigines where the men hunted and the women gathered, the men led and the women followed and so on. There was no sexual equality in roles. Even the Papuans who were at the Neolithic stage of development, the men had their tasks and the women theirs which included cooking, farming, raising the animals. No equality there. Neolithic or Paleothic, a women were not equal.