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Living
in the Leviathan |
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Reproduction |
Slash
and Burn Oil on Board
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Superorganisms
reproduce when a viable portion of the population
leave and establish a self-governing settlement
elsewhere. A hive of bees does so when it swarms.
Human communities are much more complex, as one
would expect.
The earliest settlements (according to Renfrew)
appear to have 'swarmed' when they reached population
levels that could not be sustained by the agricultural
technology which they currently practised. A group
moved to a nearby suitable area of land, and established
a village. So the neolithic revolution spread
from its homeland in the middle-east in every
direction, reaching Greece by 6000 B.C., and the
Western Atlantic Seaboard by 4000 BC. It spread
Easterly at about the same speed These appear
to have been autonomous communities or small clusters
of communities around a main centre.
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Later land-hunger caused by overcropping and overpopulation
created competition, especially in the heartlands.
Warfare appeared (the first known weapons of war
were found at Catal Huyuk), and the development
of predatory and warlike organisms. The first
evidence of human conflict has been found at Jericho
(PPNA) in 7200 B.C which was surrounded by substantial
walls, look-out towers and an outer ditch. Populations
are thought to have increased by a factor of 10
as communities adopted the settled farming life-style.
Unsustainable farming techniques periodically
ruined the land, and began the wholesale felling
of the forests. The development of ceramics, fired
bricks and metalurgy compounded the process. Following
the major river courses and along the North and
South coasts of the Mediterranean, farmers moved
into the European forests practising Slash &
Burn. The wide spread grazing of goats and sheep
irrevocable devastated enormous areas of the Middle
East and North Africa. The growing dessication
of these areas unsettled many ancient communities,
forcing them into periods of nomadism, and the
settlement of inferior and vulnerable terrain.
Much of the upland hills of Wales, apparently
the last unspoiled wild lands of Britain, were
once thick oak forest, cut down by the early settlers.
One single iron age farmstead, it has been calculated,
could clear 40 acres of forest.
The land proved nutrient rich for the proliferating
Leviathans. They flourished. There was enough
territory for the settlements to consume for thousands
of years, and they grew fat and numerous (the
thousands of years have now passed).
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