From: Mark Shepard of Wisconsin:
I just read J. DeMeo's link from the BDnow site and was fascinated! I
decided to read it while cross-referencing Lewis Mumford: "The Myth of The
Machine".
If you look at the timing of the desertification and the distribution of
societies gone from Matrist to Patrist, they directly correlate with the
development of annual tillage agriculture. They exactly correlate with the
development of the major grain crops in use today in both the old world and
new.
Also, check out his examples of art from this transition period...
(Mumford has other art examples that show the same thing) The "eden phase"
was followed by pastoralism, then by ag/war and priest/kings. Perhaps the
desertification was started first by the grazers... clearing and burning
forest brushland and savannas to graze cows. (a lot less dangerous and more
predictable than hunting wild Aurochs!) Anyone who has grazed cattle knows
that they don't eat everything and their pasture has to be "maintained" with
inputs...mowing, occasional plowing and re-planting and lots of seed.
Ancient grazers, not having these tools, turned first to sheep. After
the sheep finished eliminating the last of the most palatable plants, no
other grazing animals could survive but goats. When you get to the goats,
you're at the ecological dead-end and you have a nomadic, degraded ecosystem
populated by hungry, pissed off asswholes. Saharasia... No doubt it didn't
happen all at once overnight, but little by little for millennia...
Which came first, the chicken or the egg... Did NATURAL climate change
cause the need to shift to annual agriculture and patrist societies? Or did
patrist leaders (ie unemployed hunters... well armed and unemployed because
they killed all the game) gain control of their populations via annual
agriculture...the destruction of complex, intact ecosystems and tillage of
soil which lead inexorably to desertification ?
In either case, they went hand-in hand. Where are we now? 99% of all
agricultural land in the USA is a functional desert for 6-8 months of the
year. (RIGHT NOW TODAY it is Poisoned, exposed soil) Where does that type
of agriculture (and patrist social structure) lead us? It is a degrading
resource base with increasing costs.
Read Lewis Mumford concurrently with DeMeo... Follow it up with J Russel
Smith (Tree Crops) and Uncle Bill Mollison (Permaculture) then GET OUT
THERE AND DO IT!
