Last edited Thu Sep 27, 2012, 05:38 PM - Edit history (1)
Which is characterized by year-round farms, planting is sometimes thought have been a connection between the practice of throwing out plant refuse onto waste middens and being there the next year to see food plants growing...
If that's true, and I don't know if the beginning of crop agriculture is still interpreted that way, then having a reason to return to the same site, over and over, such as a special site for working ivory would have been important.
Obviously division of labor is just one important step among many to becoming civilized (having culture that built and supporting cities). Mastering the domestication of animals and plants, including the realization that tillage fights weeds and improves germination took time. Achieving surpluses and learning how to store them took some more time. Later, disciplining the manpower that food surpluses made possible, into useful community building would probably be achieved in fits and starts, sometimes slowly sometimes fast (animal powered plowing shows up quickly in Asia, beasts of burden weren't used to do that work in the Americas). I guess I'm not too surprised that in some places in the world--Mesopotamia, south and east Asia, civilization arose in ten thousand years, and in other places it took twenty--or more--and that establishing communication and trade among cities took even longer.
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