Agriculture in Scandinavia - Essay Example

174836 Agriculture in Scandinavia and the rest of Europe is known to have arrived from South West Asia in pre-historic times in the form of foreign colonists and their domesticated animals, seeds, and potted plants. With the fantastic archeological sources and research combined with impressive chronology, Northern Europe, Denmark and southern Scandinavia are a mine of anthropological information today. Study of transition in Southern Scandinavia became easier and more exciting as the region proved to be a laboratory of human prehistory. There are evidences that the early cultures in Middle East around 8000 BC used wild cereals for food which led to cultivated wheat, use of pottery, grains, and this is believed to have spread farming across Neolithic Europe. It is also argued that the farming revolution reached Scandinavia only around 4000 or 3800 BC, according to pottery and winding coils of clay found in the region. This assumption and belief that lasted all these years has been questioned by recent anthropologists, who claim that the farming was not borrowed, but was indigenized and Price is one among them. "Given current archaeological and anthropological evidence, the consensus among Scandinavian archaeologists today is that the introduction of agriculture was largely the result of indigenous adoption" (Price). World agriculture itself is as recent as around 10,000 years. Around 25,000 BC, hunter gatherer communities ventured beyond the arctic circle into Russia and Siberia. This area was colonized by humans only after the retreat of Pleistocene ice around 14,000 years ago. The key events of human history, pertaining to the development of agriculture, include stone tools of 7500 BC, copper and painted pottery of 4500 BC, carved rock faces of Norway with animal subjects of 4000 BC, Ertebelle culture with pointed-bottomed pots and oval bowls. Also, complex wickerwork of 3600 BC, passage tombs, dolmens of megalith, stone blocks of 3500-2500 BC that show organized endeavors, hand formed decorated pottery and year-round settlements of 2800 BC, artisan work of 2500-2000 BC and the burial mounds of elite households of 2200-1600 BC etc. The forest farmers initially seem to have ventured into agriculture and livestock husbandry, which has been evidenced in Central Sweden, South Norway where the Pitted Ware (hunter-gatherer with some agriculture) started and believed to have spread into southern Sweden and parts of Denmark from 5,900 BC onwards. From 4,800 BC onwards, Late Neolithic Farmers and Stock Herders appeared on the scene combined with Corded Ware tradition, marking the changes in agricultural societies of Scandinavia with small, rather isolated settlements of indefinable groups of agriculturists. From 4,500 BC onwards, independent agriculture started and 3,800 BC onwards the Bronze Age dawned in Norway and Sweden, giving way to technologically advanced agricultural tools. Eastern Europe seems to have continued with part time farming supported by seasonal dwelling practices and a hunters' way of life for a long time. The Linearbandkeramic farming culture spread across Central Europe, but agricultural foodstuffs were introduced in the late Mesolithic and the delay is attributed to flourishing fishing and hunting which avoided the dire need for agricultural products. Later, there is an abundance proof to show that differentiation in status, class and trade held sway over agriculture in these parts as the burial mounds show. Even though Price agrees with most of the above arguments, some of his claims are rather unprecedented. He says by middle Neolithic period, wheat was 96% of the cereals and barley was 22% at later Funnelbeaker sites. In this period, cattle were becoming indispensable representing 80% of the animal husbandry. Technology was slowly being introduced into the agriculture, pottery and weapons. "The common anthropological background of the dualist society tradition, as it originates from Durkheimian sociology, is mirrored in the separation of peasant society from tribal society. While tribal society is regarded as more complete in itself, peasantry is characterized by its partial nature," says Osterud (1978, p.23). Price says that the origin of agriculture in these areas is different from the earlier belief, because every region had its own peculiar origins. Agriculture did not spread into all parts of the globe, but chose only particular highly comfortable areas which became cradles of civilizations. The spread of farming also depended on sedentism and abundant resources, leading to centres of population which demanded more food for the increasing number of members. This depended on the availability of plant and animal species and possibility of growing a particular food crop in the chosen region. Nutritional value of the species, quick growth, reproduction in animals, seeds and nuts and their mass production, repeated production, domesticated fruits and legumes, tubers that are easy to propagate, more submissive animals like sheep, goat, horses, llamas and cattle all contributed in some way or other to the development of agriculture in all agriculture centers of the world. Herd animals like gazelle and deer became part of household food, but were never domesticated. They had to farm many kinds of nutritional crops like lentils, peas, beans, to balance between lysine and amino acids. Animal meat was available and wild food was still used. Domestication of crops depended on weather, rain, sunshine and the growth ability of crop depending on the natural resources and slowly this set the stage for a new life style of farming and domesticated plans leading to future agricultural societies. As population increase was an encouragement to grow more, conversely, population increased because of abundance in food supply. Price, in his book argues that spreading of agriculture was due to indigenous adaptation and not due to outside influence in Scandinavia. He agrees that weather, population and possibilities of certain crops growing in this soil made a lot of difference. "For Denmark, possible environmental changes that might have affected the relationship between people and food include changes in climate, sea level, marine resources, usable land area, and vegetation. Colder air temperatures could have reduced or in other ways changed vegetation, and lowered the temperature and level of the sea" (Price, Please type the year here; I do not have this book). According to Price, when agriculture appeared it did not make any great impact on the people, as it should have, if it had arrived from outside. Contrary to the earlier belief that it gradually spread, Price says it was a jerky phenomenon that made rapid advances following peacefully stabilised periods and was a shift from the southern Balkans to France and then to Denmark. He also feels that diet did not change much because wild food persisted along with the meat and grown crops. But the society changed into class separation as shown in the prestige items of the tombs. According to him, agriculture pacified Scandinavia from the earlier brutish way of life because of which more than half of the population met a violent end and in the Neolithic age, more people seemed to have died naturally. He does not agree that crops were grown due to environmental stress because the population was not so high and agriculture did not help diet much, contrary to the earlier beliefs. "There was a relatively dense population at the coast during the Ertebelle. In southern Scandinavia, changes in the landscape increased population density, even if population numbers were stable. Rising sea levels and the establishment of closed canopy forest during the Mesolithic reduced the amount of land available for the population" (Price). He draws many conclusions that agriculture in Scandinavia was an indigenous adoption, was a long term phenomenon, delayed by the success of hunter-gatherers in the region, time was Neolithic, agriculture first appeared in the land of plenty in pre-historical period and it was through the diffusion of ideas and products rather than people. He says "Agriculture appeared initially among more sedentary and complex groups of hunter-gatherers. In southern Scandinavia and Southwest Asia, for example, sedentism clearly precedes the beginning of domestication". Another Anthropologist, Jared Diamond explains in his book how the European society gained dominance over others first in agriculture and farming and later in weapons leading to colonization. He feels people had abundant agricultural products and this diverted their attention to luxuries and weapons to protect themselves and the community, to face any situation. He says adapting agriculture was a catastrophic mistake, because with agriculture came evils like gender inequality, class and status, disease, slavery and despotism. "Besides malnutrition, starvation, and epidemic diseases, farming helped bring another curse upon humanity: deep class divisions. Hunter-gatherers have little or no stored food, and no concentrated food sources, like an orchard or a herd of cows: they live off the wild plans and animals they obtain each day. Therefore, there can be no kings, no class or social parasites who grow fat on food seized from others," (Diamond). He also refused to believe that agriculture provided leisure which led to the development of arts. "As for the claim that agriculture encouraged to flowering of art by providing us with leisure time, modern hunter-gatherers have at least as much free time as do farmers. The whole emphasis on leisure time as a critical factor seems to me misguided," (Diamond). Success in agriculture also led to the cultural, political and economic hegemony of Europe during 1900, even though two World Wars destroyed much of this success. According to Jared Diamond, "the gaps in power and technology between human societies do not reflect cultural or racial differences, but rather originate in environmental differences powerfully amplified by various positive feedback loops'. According to him, they are the main forces that shaped human history in the last 10,000 years or more. He explains the fate of human society within this framework; he says the central key issue was food production and animal husbandry. He says that the co-evolutionary process of domestication, suitability of crops and plants were recognized unconsciously. He argues that there has been a continuous relationship between population density, social culture and agricultural growth. In this argument, Price and Diamond are together. To the question why history unfolded differently in different continents, Diamond answers that geography is the main cause of making different societies develop different kinds of institutions like agriculture, animal domestication or immunity to disease. He sights the difference between Western Europe and the Middle East or Africa and explains what a strong role geography had played and how the regions have adapted species according to geographical necessities and how each place has adopted its own system according to its geographical compulsions, weather and placement. He says that farming spread fast because it feeds more people than any other occupation like hunting or gathering and farms are nearby. There is no need to wander and look for the crops. Climate, temperature, seasons, habitat are all interconnected with the growth of history. Farming enables technology, military technology leading to conflicts and wars and then diseases. People in the Middle East and Africans had developed complex farming societies according to their own needs. This argument was marginally accepted by other anthropologists, who think that the development of agriculture had made great differences to human societies. "Economy, society and culture was not based merely upon cities and manifold endeavor in the realm of manufactures or trade, but also upon agriculture and the forces at work within the agrarian sector" Barker (1994, p. 28). Many of them, like Diamond, are of the opinion that development of peasant societies contributed adversely in many ways. "The peasant existence was ruled by uncertainty and disease, natural catastrophe, misfortune and war, as well as oppression by feudal lords. Especially in the Middle Ages, peasants suffered from the consequences of brutal wars, manorial encroachments and the capriciousness of the forces of nature," Rosener (1985, p.7). Hence, Scandinavian agriculture remains very different from agriculture in other regions of the world, because agriculture, animal husbandry and life styles depend mainly on the geography of the region, which dictates terms on human history. It has done so from pre-historical ages and its presence could be felt even in today's political complexities. BIBLIOGRAPHY: 1. Diamond, Jarred (1997), Guns, Germs and Steel, Norton and Company, 1. Osterud, Oyvind (1978), Agrarian Structure and Peasant Politics in Scandinavia, Umoversitsforlaget, Oslo. 2. Price, Douglas (Please add details of this book. I do not have this book with me. ) 3. Rosener, Werner (1985), Peasants in the Middle Ages, Polity Press, Cambridge. 4. Rosener, Werner (1994), The Peasantry of Europe, Blackwell, Oxford. 5. Rudolph, Richard (1995), The European Peasant Family and Society, Liverpool University Press. 6. Scott, Tom (1998), The Peasantries of Europe, Longman, London. Read More