Europe
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Any trees planted by the builders of Göbekli Tepe would not have had a high chance of survival if large numbers of animals browsed nearby, so herbivores must have been scarce. The structure occupies a hilltop, which is a great vantage point from which to spot migrating game. It seems possible that the people lived around Göbekli Tepe for a significant part of each year, and that they exerted severe hunting pressure on local animal populations in the vicinity. The suppression of herbivores could have opened another resource—grass seeds. Where they’re grazed, grasses reproduce asexually using underground rhizomes, but when grazing is reduced grasses reproduce sexually from seed heads. Grass seeds are a key human resource, for they are nutrient dense and can be stored, or ground into flour and cooked into storable cakes, which can be fed to workers.
This hypothetical economy of the Göbekli Tepe people, however, leaves us with a problem, for in places like Turkey grasslands can quickly turn into forests if grazers are absent. To prevent this, and keep the grasses productive, the builders of Göbekli Tepe could have used fire like Australia’s Aboriginal peoples do. The judicious use of fire could have protected valuable nut trees, promoted the growth and seeding of grass and, if practised at a distance from their camps, even attracted herbivores to the sweet young pick. One enormous benefit of using fire in this way is that it allows advance planning. Climatic conditions permitting, it can be anticipated that game animals will come to forage on the regrowing grass a certain number of weeks after burning, and that grass seed will become available after a longer interval.
This all adds up to a kind of ‘proto-domestication’ stage in the management of wild resources, involving significant ecosystem manipulation, but not planting or intensive selection of plants for seed size. This would make the people who pushed into western Europe about 14,000 years ago quite different from the low-population-density living, big game hunters they replaced. Skilled landscape manipulators who were harvesting from low down the food chain, the newly arrived groups could build up dense populations, as well as provisioning individuals to build temples—or wage war.
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* An elephant depicted on the lion panel in Chauvet Cave is hairless and strangely thin. Although key features are ambiguous, it’s just possible that it represents a straight-tusked elephant.
* Dates are given without the uncertainty limits, which can span several thousand years. Thus, the most likely date for human arrival in Europe is given as 38,000, and the extinction of the Neanderthals as 39,000 years ago. In reality both events could have occurred between 35,000 and 40,000 years ago.
* The small creatures intimately associated with them, such as the dung beetles, also become extinct in Europe. But, generally, the smaller European vertebrate species that inhabited Europe during the glacial maxima find refuges somewhere in Europe.
* Although we think of lions as being African, until recently they were widespread in western Asia, a relic population of which survives in western India.
CHAPTER 33
The Domesticators
The human population of Europe must have grown between 13,000 years ago (when there were an estimated 410,000 Europeans) and 9000 years ago, as the climate had warmed and stabilised. The retreat of the ice revealed newly created or rejuvenated soils across northern Europe, which was then rapidly colonised. In effect, a great new fertile land, enjoying an increasingly warm climate, was inherited by the most robust of pioneering plants and animals. Among the first movers were the surviving tundra species—the lichen and the reindeer that fed on them, the dwarf willow, the mountain hare, arctic fox and lemming. Then came the mixed deciduous forest, which expanded rapidly, and by about 8000 years ago had reached its current extent.1 Among the adaptable colonisers that thrived in it were the red squirrel, hedgehog, red fox and badger—all of which were destined to become familiar creatures in modern Europe, and some of which would travel with the Europeans during the age of empire to faraway lands, where they would entrench themselves as pests.
Of course, larger creatures were present as well, including bear, wolf and red deer. But it was the humans who were set to prosper most in the newly habitable lands. The agriculturalists arose about 11,000 years ago, somewhere in a swathe of country extending from present-day eastern Turkey to Iran. Goats, sheep, pigs and cattle became domesticated more or less simultaneously, and the process of domestication must have been deliberate, for someone—possibly children—must have tended the flocks, taking them daily to pasture and returning to the encampment at night.2 How could that have begun? Dmitry Belyayev’s fox experiment tells us that the traits seen in almost all domestic species develop through selection for tameness. We can imagine that, over the millennia, many baby herbivores were brought into campsites, and those that were calmer in the presence of humans would have ‘self-selected’ to stay in the camp after reaching sexual maturity. But why was it only from 11,500 years ago that this led to domestication?
It’s widely believed that agriculture and animal husbandry developed because of climatic stabilisation about 11,000 years ago. The argument has been put best by Brian Fagan in his book, The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilisation.3 Fagan argues that ice-age climates were hostile, but that an exceptional period of climatic stability that followed allowed agriculture to be worthwhile. Climate clearly has an impact in agriculture, but I think it is a mistake to think of it as the only factor, or even the decisive factor. During the ice ages, climatic change was far slower than it is today; shifts in climate would have been imperceptible to the people living back then.* Because large areas at low latitude were suitable for agriculture even during the ice age, we must look more widely for an answer. Perhaps, as Fagan says, ice-age weather was wilder and more disruptive than that which followed. But this is yet to be demonstrated to a convincing degree.
When searching for the origins of domestication, it’s helpful to think of it as a form of delayed gratification, for grain must be sowed for later consumption, rather than eaten now, and a flock must be built up before it can be culled. For this to be worthwhile, there must be a reasonable prospect of return. A hostile climate can certainly limit the size of the return, and wild weather can destroy it. But the return is also dependent upon factors that humans can control. For example, herbivores can destroy a crop, or predators ravage a herd, while hostile neighbours can destroy or steal both.
The hunting and fire-management skills of the Göbekli Tepe people would have increased the prospect of a return on the investment involved in agriculture. But to make the bargain truly worthwhile, they would need to prevent neighbours from raiding their flocks and crops. We know little of their political organisation, but it’s not unreasonable to think that it may have taken a thousand years or so after the construction of Göbekli Tepe for them to acquire such refinements.
Analyses of animal bones from the earliest village sites reveal that people were selectively culling young males from their herds. This process of ‘unnatural’ selection allowed whatever it was that caused people to spare the odd male from the butchers’ knife, to survive into the next generation. Within a few thousand years those selected traits would give rise to the various domestic types that we see in the archaeological record.
Goats, sheep and pigs were all important to the earliest European herders, but how much more significant was the cow to become! Hindus retain an appropriate reverence for the creature. Not so the Europeans—a people mythologically conceived from the coupling of a bull and a goddess: Europa, the wide-eyed one, the cow-faced one, was abducted by a white bull—the god Zeus in disguise—and she bore him three sons. Echoes of the centrality of cattle in European culture are to be seen in Neolithic engravings of oxen pulling carts that are carrying the sun. Even today, in Sienna in Tuscany, during the Palio parade, oxen pull carts through the city streets—in what is perhaps a survivor of an Etruscan cultural practice.
As its mythology suggests, Europe owes more to the union of cow and human than any land ever
did. Europeans are among the few who can wax fat on the milk of the cow, having the highest lactose tolerance on Earth—the Irish being champion of champions in this regard. The ability of Europeans to thrive on milk has, of course, been built on the misfortune of countless of their ancestors—who could not tolerate lactose as adults. They perished, so that we lucky few could build a civilisation on the strength of the cow.
At domestication’s dawn, I have no doubt that the cow was considered a member of the family, a creature protected and cosseted, which in return gave nourishment. Anyone who has hand-milked a cow will know that, for three weeks after the birth of her calf, her milk is especially delicious and rich. But woe betide the person who tries to milk her before her calf has had its fill. She will resist with all her wiles—as is her right in the bargain of domestication we have struck with her—before giving in to the human who wishes to taste the delicious drop. Yet, after her calf has drunk its fill, she will contentedly yield her udder, even taking a slurp herself if you aim the stream at her mouth.
Today, the cow is no longer regarded as a family member, but a unit of production. She is often miserable, perpetually confined to her stall in a mechanised dairy factory. The udders of her aurochs ancestor were so small that even when lactating they were barely visible. But over thousands of years of unnatural selection, the udders of the dairy cow have grown so prodigious that today their weight often cripples her legs, and these bovines are prone to the potentially deadly disease mastitis. It is not, it seems to me, worth reneging on the deal we first made those thousands of years ago, for the sake of a glass of cheap milk.
The earliest domesticators were sailors who settled some of the larger Mediterranean islands. In mainland archaeological sites the bones of early domesticates are inevitably mixed with those of wild animals. But on islands there were no wild sheep, goats or cattle, making interpretation easier. Cyprus, which is 60 kilometres from the Turkish mainland, was discovered by early domesticators about 10,500 years ago. They brought with them sheep, goats, cattle and pigs that did not differ in body form from their wild ancestors, but whose remains indicate that the young males were being culled.
One of the most modified domesticates is the sheep, the various breeds of which bear little resemblance to its wild ancestor, the mouflon. Remarkably, the descendants of some of the very earliest domestic sheep roam wild today on Corsica, Sardinia, Rhodes and Cyprus (where the local population has become so distinctive that it is recognised as a subspecies). Their ancestors must have escaped soon after the first domesticators and their herds arrived between 7000 and 10,000 years ago.
The early domesticators also brought the fallow deer and fox to Cyprus. Perhaps the young of these creatures had been adopted by children and had escaped when they reached the island. Some researchers, however, think that they were deliberately released to stock the island with game. The settlers also brought crops—in the form of einkorn wheat, emmer wheat and lentil—and began farming. By 7300 years ago, the domesticators and their flocks had spread from their point of origin in the Levant to coasts as far as western Iberia.4 As sheep and goats spread westwards, they did not encounter similar native species with which they could hybridise. But domestic pigs would have encountered herds of wild boar, and domestic cattle would have encountered aurochs. Genetic studies reveal that European wild boars bred with domesticated sows, their genes entering the domestic herd. This genetic influence would eventually spread back east, far beyond the geographic range of the European wild boar.5
Analysis of the genome of an aurochs that lived in Britain 6750 years ago revealed that her genes survive in some ancient British and Irish breeds. The ancient herders might have captured aurochs to add to their herds as they became depleted. The study also revealed that the genes regulating the brain and nervous system, growth, metabolism and the immune system have altered most in the modern breeds relative to their wild ancestors.6 Domestication has also altered humans. The idea that we have undergone auto-domestication can be attributed to Dmitry Belyayev. One result is that today many human cultures value husbandry more than hunting: over 10,000 years, evolution has favoured those with the ability to nurture crops and herds. And even though we like to think of ourselves as the lords and masters of the farm, we have experienced very strong natural selection since farming began, resulting from a changed diet, changed exposure to disease, and a more sedentary lifestyle.
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* Climate change is progressing today at least 30 times faster than at any time during the past 2.6 million years.
CHAPTER 34
From the Horse to Roman Failure
Research into the genetics of late-surviving European hunter-gatherers and the newly arrived farmers suggests that the farmers almost entirely replaced the earlier occupants in many areas.1 Since the advent of writing, Europe’s human history has been a sorry tale of war and extermination, so the replacement of one people by another 8000 years ago is not surprising. An analysis of skeletons from cemeteries shows that for about 700 years after agriculture became established in any area, the population increased rapidly. This was followed by a stable period lasting about 1000 years, after which populations began to collapse, and within a few centuries human numbers became much reduced.2 The expansion of the agriculturalists would not be the last great human migration into Europe. About 5000 years ago, horse-riding herders from the Russian steppes arrived in Europe, again displacing some peoples. As a result of this long history of invasions, going back all the way to Neanderthal times, every European living today is of widely mixed heritage, as our variable eye, skin and hair colour and form suggest.
Ever since humans first arrived in Europe, migration had been westward, and prior to the eighteenth century the great innovations were mostly eastern, often only penetrating Europe after considerable delays. A hundred years ago Europeans were all but unaware of this. The idea that Europe was an appendix of Asia as far as human cultures were concerned would have been derided as ridiculous or considered insulting. Among those who delivered the news that Europe was indisputably not the cradle of civilisation was Vere Gordon Childe, the first and arguably the greatest ever synthesiser in archaeology. Famous for his view that European civilisation was a ‘peculiar and individual manifestation of the human spirit’, rather than the apogee of human achievement, he was also one of the greatest eccentrics to wield an archaeologist’s trowel.3
Childe was—like that other original thinker Baron Nopcsa—the quintessential outsider. Born in Sydney, Australia, in 1892, and son of an Anglican reverend, Childe was a perpetual valetudinarian, so sickly that he was home-schooled, and of such an ‘ugly appearance’ that he became the butt of cruel jokes.4 Awkward, uncouth and without social graces, Childe seems never to have had a sexual relationship.5 His one love in life, outside his work, was speed. He owned several fast and expensive cars, and after he moved to England he became infamous for his reckless driving—including a high-speed dash down Piccadilly in the early hours of the morning that attracted the attention of the police. After winning a scholarship to Oxford he became frustrated that his Marxist views prevented him gaining an academic position. So he returned to Australia to work for the New South Wales Labor Party, and wrote a book called How Labour Governs—a highly insightful if disillusioned study of worker representation in politics.
After returning to London in 1922, Childe was unemployed for several years; but this was the most productive time of his life. He researched in the libraries of the British Museum and the Royal Anthropological Institute, and in 1925 published The Dawn of European Civilisation. Along with The Aryans: A Study of IndoEuropean Origins, which came out a year later, the book established conclusively the importance of the East as the fountainhead of ‘European’ civilisation.
As a Marxist historian, Childe saw prehistory in terms of revolutions and changing economies. Among his great excavations was Skara Brae, a famous Neolithic complex in the Orkney Islands, and among his profound insights w
as the identification of the ‘Danubian Corridor’ which was used by many species, including Europe’s human–Neanderthal hybrids, to migrate westwards. A fervent supporter of the Soviet Union, in 1945 he wrote to his friend Robert Stevenson, the Keeper of National Antiquities of Scotland, that ‘the brave Red Army will liberate Scotland next year, the Stalin tanks will come crunching over the frozen North Sea’.6 The brutal Soviet suppression of the Hungarian revolution in 1956 disillusioned him, and towards the end of that year he retired prematurely from his position as director of the Institute of Archaeology and returned to Australia. In a letter dated 20 October 1957, marked ‘not to be opened until January 1968’, he told of his last days:
I have always considered that a sane society would…offer…euthanasia as a crowning honour…For myself I don’t believe I can make further useful contributions…An accident may easily and naturally befall me on a mountain cliff. I have revisited my native land and have found I like Australian society much less than European without believing I can do anything to better it: for I have lost faith in my ideals.7
On 19 October 1957 the great archaeologist flung himself over the 1000-metre-high precipice known as Govetts Leap in the Blue Mountains, near where he had grown up. We can only hope that he revelled in the acceleration of his last moments.*
New species continued to be added to the human retinue. The cat seems to have domesticated itself in the near east by 9000 years ago. And around 5500 years ago the most important species to join the household—the horse—was domesticated somewhere in the steppes of western Eurasia. It arose from Equus ferus, a genetically well-mixed species (having little geographic variation) that existed across a vast range, from Alaska to the Pyrenees. Unlike the aurochs, whose regional ancestors can be traced genetically, the history of the horse is ‘a genetic paradox’, though it’s clear that Przewalski’s horse is not an ancestor of the domestic horse, but a separate lineage going back 160,000 years.8