The Big History of Civilizations | Origins of Agriculture | Wondrium

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What makes the Big History approach so unique? Whereas a traditional survey might take you through the major events of a period and introduce you to key dates and people (the “kings and battles” approach), Big History zooms out to bring larger trends into focus, from the type of geography best suited for civilization to the way climate patterns drive human activity like the transition into agriculture.

00:00 Transition From Foraging to Farming
03:42 How Foraging and Farming Differ
08:18 Remains of Ohalo II and Domestication
12:37 Climate Change Facilitates Transition to Farming
19:01 Humans Adopt Less Nomadic Lifestyles
22:48 The Trap of Sedentism and Its Consequences
25:33 Ways of Increasing Productivity for Land
27:41 Evidence of Transition to Farming

One major trend you’ll uncover is that, regardless of time or place, civilizations require certain “Goldilocks factors” to succeed. At all scales—the cosmic, the planetary, the ecological, and the human—you can view moments where a combination of just-right ingredients creates the necessary conditions to cross the next threshold of complexity. A few such unique conditions that Professor Benjamin examines are:

-Climate changes during the Paleolithic Era
-The relationship between the agricultural revolution and human population growth
-The relationship between power and the rise of early city-states
-The spread of ideas along Silk Roads and other trade routes
-The Industrial Revolution and the development of consumer capitalism
-Peak oil, climate change, over-population, and other near-future scenarios

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[Queila]

I really agree 💯 with this public lecture and I request this lecture need to held too all over the world, cos in modern day society undermining agriculture sectore which is ignoring the foundation of human civilzation history. ✊🇹🇱✊ I Will always support this channel in my entire online learning. My support from East Timor🇹🇱🇹🇱🇹🇱

[DK-ngnd]

Brilliant lecture, concise and informative.

[theroadupward]

Nice explanation. But the "healthy hunter gatherer" vs. the "stressed farmer" paradigm ignores one big fact. HG's could at any time starve to death. They knew this. No fridge. Find food daily or die. Grains could be stored, domestic animals are in the pen. This is a big deal.

[fuegosmoke]

Explained with a lot of enthousiasm. Thank you!

[joshuatraffanstedt]

Easily the most important revolutions in human history.

[prechagirl]

Great lecture. However why does the lecturer use different formats of eras BP BCE?

[johnfajer]

This presentation was amazing! Thank you!

[SunShine-snek]

Thank you so much for this great lecture

[Zathinean]

It’s funny to see him spin awkwardly every minute to a different camera angle.

[btetschner]

What a great video! Very interesting, thank you for the video.

[LuxisAlukard]

As Lindybeige said:
"This agriculture experiment isn't really working for humans, it's been going on for only 12000 years..."

[davepx]

A good talk, which I appreciated especially for its appreciation of the intermediate steps from "classic" hunting & foraging to full domestication, and its attention to the southern continent (I wasn't aware of fire-stick farming, so there's another example of paracultivation intermediate between "pure" foraging and agriculture).

I'm not convinced though that sedentarisation and farming appreciably lowered life expectancy overall: the supposed paleolithic lifespans often thrown around in fact relate to modern non-farming populations after centuries of interaction with sedentary neighbours, while reconstruction of likely fertility & mortality in pre-modern food-producing societies suggests little difference. Beware lurid tales of life expectancy plunging as the neolithic spread.

The explanation of Aboriginal Australian non-embrace of farming is a persuasive one. I wonder though if the drought conditions of the Ice Age (necessitating the abandonment of much of the interior) also left a cultural imprint, warning against reliance on more intensive exploitation of the land for which the environmental conditions might not persist.

[novelkars]

Ohalo was settled by Kebarans or proto-Kebarans. Natufians didn't exist 25, 000 years ago.
I think the later spread of agriculture largely because of competitive advantage in conjunction with other technologies, basically being better at squatting over new lands.

[Brandonhayhew]

Foraging sucks because they savaging around and little foo is often find but another option is hunting but it takes time to hunt a good pray

[prakash]

The video is good on information supply but i failed to understand the need of the presenter to keep rotating every 2 minutes in the was distracting and gave a bad taste to the please aviod this!

[PerryWidhalm]

Horticulture / agriculture emerged as a survival subsistence strategy. Humans DID NOT "progress" to horticulture / agriculture via better tools technology, rather, better tools / technology was the result of necessity. A Catch-22 appeared with horticulture / agriculture - the more food produced the greater the human population grew until villages emerged then towns and finally cities. Simultaneously, as human populations increased needing ever more resources biodiversity and easily obtainable raw materials declined. With agricultural-based civilization, specialization, slavery, organized warfare, poverty and perpetual strife became the way of those trapped in its illusions. The greatest catastrophe in human evolution was horticulture / agriculture that led to civilization.

[psingh]

indian farmers stand with all farmers - repeal all laws in india

[dimitardimitrakov]

Didnt understand why the dog was so essential to be the first step of the domestication project. It might be so and evidence to be so but still...why?

[webbstar]

great clear lecture, although (i'm very new to this topic) am hearing/reading that climate change and over population is a very simplistic dated and over used

[staticxtract]

I know we suck as humans but this stuff is pretty cool