Lightcan,
The concept that people took up agriculture as a a means to deal with expanding population is utterly wrong. For a few million years we slowly expanded our population as HGs or GHs, depending on your latitude. Species wax and wane. At this stage the Earth's Primary Productivity allowed about 10,000,000 high level human predators. If there wasn't enough food, there simply wouldn't have been the population. You cannot make people out of thin air. You don't have as many Inuit per 100 km2 as you might have Pygmies in equatorial Africa. This is the core of the two rat experiment. You can actually get population explosions and crashed in large herbivore populations but they seem to be an exception and localised.
Some sort of balance existed for humans, with a few unfortunates keeping numbers stable. We've all got to die some time...
It's only once you start to steal more of your share of the Primary Productivity, by replacing grass with human semi-food of grain and guarding it, in effect you are stealing Primary Productivity from other species, that you can explode your population. Other species then die. We are exterminating species at an unprecedented rate. We have taken their share of the Earth's Primary Productivity. They don't have it, they disappear. We have it, our population explodes. No individual without food, they simply don't exist. If there is food, they appear.
Interestingly much of the human exploding population is hungry. Perhaps we forget this in the First World. Primary Productivity is not equably shared at the moment. Plus we are currently living beyond the Primary Productivity based on the stored Primary Productivity from ancient herbage, oil. When it's gone it's gone. Not sure the Earth is making new oil deposits at the moment!
This is how I understand Quinn.
Re pastoralism, yes, I understood it is more recent than grain. The culture which swept across Europe is what Manning calls the beef-wheat people. Dairy from about 8000 BP as far as I know...
Peter
The concept that people took up agriculture as a a means to deal with expanding population is utterly wrong. For a few million years we slowly expanded our population as HGs or GHs, depending on your latitude. Species wax and wane. At this stage the Earth's Primary Productivity allowed about 10,000,000 high level human predators. If there wasn't enough food, there simply wouldn't have been the population. You cannot make people out of thin air. You don't have as many Inuit per 100 km2 as you might have Pygmies in equatorial Africa. This is the core of the two rat experiment. You can actually get population explosions and crashed in large herbivore populations but they seem to be an exception and localised.
Some sort of balance existed for humans, with a few unfortunates keeping numbers stable. We've all got to die some time...
It's only once you start to steal more of your share of the Primary Productivity, by replacing grass with human semi-food of grain and guarding it, in effect you are stealing Primary Productivity from other species, that you can explode your population. Other species then die. We are exterminating species at an unprecedented rate. We have taken their share of the Earth's Primary Productivity. They don't have it, they disappear. We have it, our population explodes. No individual without food, they simply don't exist. If there is food, they appear.
Interestingly much of the human exploding population is hungry. Perhaps we forget this in the First World. Primary Productivity is not equably shared at the moment. Plus we are currently living beyond the Primary Productivity based on the stored Primary Productivity from ancient herbage, oil. When it's gone it's gone. Not sure the Earth is making new oil deposits at the moment!
This is how I understand Quinn.
Re pastoralism, yes, I understood it is more recent than grain. The culture which swept across Europe is what Manning calls the beef-wheat people. Dairy from about 8000 BP as far as I know...
Peter