We need to go into history that is
millions of years ago to understand the difference in lifestyle as it is called
now and the way of living and how mankind evolved from Stone Age to its current
state. As far as one can go into
history, almost the whole of human history, in the ancient times, at least 3
million years ago, mankind had lived by carrying out two basic activities of
hunting for food, fishing and gathering edible items of all kinds from fruits
to insects. Mankind has lived by doing
what comes naturally - as a hunter-gatherers.
The animals communicate well enough to hunt as a group, bees can locate
where the best pollen is. Well it is
true that human beings also have dignified both activities with elaborate
ritual and with attention to the spirits of nature. The only exception in human race is that
business of hunting and gathering has involved specialization, the men doing
the hunting and the women doing the gathering.
Unlike the animals, humans carry home the food they hunted and share and
consume it, rather than hunt and consume it there and then. All these is a result of mankind’s ability to
communicate, speculate, and rationalize.
These does not alter the fact that 3 million years ago Stone Age man,
the hunter-gatherer, engaged in an activity as natural as the swoop of a eagle
or the grazing of a deer.
The change then came 10,000 years ago
when mankind first discovered how to cultivate crops and then discovered how to
domesticate animals. This was the most
significant development in human history.
It happened within the Stone Age, the tools used then were flint rather
than metal it is this dividing line which separates the old Stone Age
(palaeolithic) from the new Stone Age (Neolithic) and this has been aptly
called the Neolithic Revolution. In this
revolution, the strange thing that occurred independently in separate parts of
the world – the middle east and in the America.
How this unlikely coincidence occurred which ended in the cold phase of
the then present ice age. Bison, in
herds, moved to colder regions, Mammoths become extinct and plants of all kinds
grow more easily in the new temperature zones. It is not very hard to
imagine that in these circumstances, a strong human race impulse to abandon the
all the pursuit of the bison and to just stay, instead, in a region where
edible plants are now growing in sufficient profusion seem worth encouraging
and protected by weeds around them. Some human groups adapted to a new way of
life. Others go after the bison. If the
impulse is to settle down, there is also a strong incentive to ensure that
animals remain nearby as a supply of food and this may involve attempts to herd
them and/or to pen them in enclosures, or to entice them near the settlement by
laying out fodder.
