--- After Göbekli Tepe (c.9600–9000 BCE), the advent of agricultural knowledge disseminated through mythological narratives, and [smaller neighbouring sites](https://archaeology.org/issues/march-april-2024/features/discovering-a-new-neolithic-world/#:~:text=Archaeologists%20working%20across%20the%20region,shaped%20standing%20stones%20that%20are) begin to emerge. Still primarily hunter-gatherers, [one part of humankind](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natufian_culture), turned its back on foraging as an ethos and with agriculture—embraced the consistent returns on gathered cereals and the **early cultivation** of wild emmer and barley. **Genesis 3:19** > בְּזֵעַ֤ת אַפֶּ֙יךָ֙ תֹּ֣אכַל לֶ֔חֶם עַ֤ד שֽׁוּבְךָ֙ אֶל־הָ֣אֲדָמָ֔ה כִּ֥י מִמֶּ֖נָּה לֻקָּ֑חְתָּ כִּֽי־עָפָ֣ר אַ֔תָּה וְאֶל־עָפָ֖ר תָּשֽׁוּב > By the sweat of your brow shall you get bread to eat, until you return to the ground for from it you were taken. For dust you are, and to dust you shall return. ![[Thomas_Cole_Expulsion from the Garden of Eden 1828.png]] Now, for thousands of years men and women with stone implements, early sickles, wandered the landscape, cutting off heads of wild grain and taking them home. However, wild wheat and barley shatter—the kernels easily break off the plant and fall to the ground, making them next to impossible to harvest when fully ripe. To tend these fields, people had to stop wandering, moving into permanent villages throughout the rivers of life in the Fertile Crescent and the 長江 (Yangtze.) [Over this millennium](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24753577/) (c. 9,000–8,000 BCE), they developed new stories, tools, and created pottery. In approximately 20-200 years, the repeated planting of the easier to harvest non-shattering grain, created large new areas, golden fields of domesticated wheat, with mutated plants that, so to speak, waited for farmers to harvest them at maturity. One cannot understate the significance of this change. For over 60,000 years prior, man lived in caves, struggling to survive, very much a victim, a lamb, to nature, or perhaps more aptly, we were simply nature itself. Yet in just ~1000 years after [[0HE - Symbolic Dawn - (10,000–9,000 BCE)#The First Revolution Was in Meaning|the first revolution]], with only myriads of stagnation existing prior, man had seemingly split a new branch from the tree of life, the advent of agriculture, a gift from [[0HE - Symbolic Dawn - (10,000–9,000 BCE)#The First Revolution Was in Meaning|the pantheon of gods,]] a blessing for man to have dominion over the earth. ![[La-Tortue-rouge-2016.jpg]] *Note: it’s not like we were doing nothing during this 60,000 year period prior (c.70,000 BCE). We [developed language](https://news.mit.edu/2025/when-did-human-language-emerge-0314#:~:text=It%20is%20a%20deep%20question,social%20use%20100%2C000%20years%20ago.), as well as the traditions / conditions possible to discover agriculture. Note that the capacity of language ≠ development of language. The most modern analogy would be our development of the language of mathematics. Evidence shows we began to develop maths [c.20,000 BCE](https://doi.org/10.31730/osf.io/6z2yr), yet it took us until the modern age to develop the syntax into sophistication apt enough to describe both the material and phenomenological world. Think about how many toxic plants, dangerous animals, climates, etc there are. All our knowledge, and our very language, had to be built with trial and error, paved with countless lives.* --- Yet, at this time (c.8,000 BCE), ideas such as morality simply don't exist in the context we understand them today. It is uncertain whether the concept of time itself had anything close to a recognizable interpretation. Instead, the realities of nature, of the 60,000 years prior, would have shaped a pragmatically skewed narrative. That [outside the clan is dangerous](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nataruk), that the myths carried by oral tradition are sacred, and eventually, that for good harvest, one must appease the gods. However, agriculture was too great a gift to be contained by these simple axioms, and the wheel of revolution had already been spun. [Some villages tried to resist](https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1800163115), but the neighbouring fields slowly grew, demanding more craftsmen to build clay granaries. Their demand for meat grew, and we see shepherds begin to [selectively slaughter](https://livestockconservancy.org/2022/10/11/a-brief-history-of-goat-domestication/#:~:text=Domestication%20did%20not%20happen%20suddenly,animals%20spread%20to%20new%20locations.), indicating intentional herd management. The relative wealth of these communities would have been immense, having meat constantly every month, having beer, bread, and eventually semi-private households, the origin of property. We can see at this time, these settlements grow to the thousands, and culture and specialization began to develop. Children and elders were buried _with goods_—implying an afterlife, inheritance, **blood lineage** as continuity. Those specializing in slaughter, shepherding, cooking, farming, and eventually in irrigation, would have lead to a relatively small surplus, debts, and economy. Seasonal festivals would become places for prestige, for who can offer more to the gods, to the community? From the outside, from tribes which rejected agriculture, those with their own long oral traditions, one can only begin to imagine what seeing this development must have felt like. 60,000 years we've hunted and gathered to sustain life, our elders, those we hold above ourselves, told us clearly, tradition is our truth, and our tradition is more than myth, it is our gods. In this sense, once these other settlements began to prosper, a mix of something deeper than desire begins to take root, righteousness. Agriculture becomes gods gift to one culture, and blasphemy to another. It is no coincidence that by the end of this period, an agricultural settlement called the city of palms becomes famous for one feature, their walls. ![[David-Shepherd-Shibam-1960.webp]] *Note: Artistic interpretation - not meant to be historically accurate. The walls also may have severed to protect against flash floods, as well as to keep slaves in. Though these early societies would likely be better characterized as "societies with slaves" rather than slave societies, as they lacked the abundance to support them.* ## Proto-Morality, Slavery and Scapegoating It must be emphasized, for as revolutionary this time period was, the nature of said revolution cannot be compared with our dialectic perspective on change which is predicated on the western christian ethos. Instead, the nature of this change can be thought of as a ritualistic progression, perhaps if one was even uncharitable, you could characterize it as a trance. This helps contextualize the logos behind human sacrifice, slavery and [[Mimetic Desire → Rivalry → Crisis → Scapegoat → Sacrifice → Myth → Ritual#The Mechanism of Scapegoating|scapegoating]]. [Slavery](https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139059251.006) was the not only a right, it was a necessary function of society where all progress was made through physical toil, and whose payoff was quite low. Simply, priests, and by extension these societies, likely didn't award prestige or extra food to those who irrigated the desert and those who hauled boulders in the desert sun. Even if they wanted to, their stockpiles couldn't support such a luxury. Yet for not only progress, but survival, the work had to be done. Even today, there exists no greater societal motivator than that of the whip, of violence, it's just that we allow the state to monopolize and institutionalize it. In the collective conscious, this class of people, outsiders, went unrecognized for their work. When times became hard, it is always the lowest in a society who are the first to receive less, work harder, and eventually be blamed. *"For we have divine right, an entitlement to the grace of god, we thanklessly allowed you into our community, our culture, our society. Yet how do you repay us? You ask for more? You ask for change? Change... Is this not how we've ended up in this situation? For I remember when things used to be stable, used to be good, before you started complaining."* --- ![[A map showing neolithic and Natufian culture settlements, via ResearchGate.png]] [A map showing neolithic and Natufian culture settlements](http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.22111)