Betty Lou The First Berry Cultivator—Part 1

For several hundred thousands of years before Homo sapiens became farmers—in the form of the first Sumerian agriculturalists—our deep ancestors lived as hunter-gatherers. They lived in balance with their world. Like animals, they trod lightly on their Earth. They were few in number, took only what they needed, and left little or no trace of their presence.

When their ancestors—apelike hominids—came down out of the trees and began to live on the savannah, they had to learn to exist in the open, finding sustenance while avoiding the numerous predators that would stalk them. They succeeded in thriving in this risky environment, and found ways to cohabit with lions and leopards, as bipeds and quadrupeds learned how to grant the other necessary space to live, without major threat to either.

Our ancestors most likely began their carnivorous diet by finishing off kills left by the big cats or hyenas. Over time their hunting skills improved, as they began chasing down and killing the slower moving, large herbivores, as well as learning how to snatch small game. They supplemented this meat diet with a wide variety of plants—tubers, nuts, fruits, and other vegetables. In fact, vegetation was the major part of their diet.

Archeologists recently made an amazing discovery in a far-flung province of Turkey, at the site of an eight thousand year-old Sumerian settlement. They found primitive clay tablets that were inscribed with very ancient characters that predate a type of script used on later Sumerian tablets. It appears that the story told by the tablets is about how the Sumerians learned to develop agriculture—describing the pioneering work of a much earlier ancestor in Africa. It seems that earlier cultures, dating back as far as 12 millennia ago, had told and retold the story of how this horticultural trailblazer had come upon the method of planting seeds to grow edible vegetables. The actual identity of the first cultivator had been lost in the repeated telling of her story, so the archeologists named her Betty Lou. This is her story.

She lived something on the order of 15,000 years ago (as best could be determined from the tablet cuneiform inscriptions) on the African savannah. Betty Lou was a member of a band of hunter-gatherers, composed of an extended family of about 20 People. And “People” was what they called themselves. As far as they knew, they were pretty much the only living beings like them in the world, for their world was very small. They lived a semi-nomadic existence—settling for a few months around a water hole and then moving on when the water dried up or the local plants and game were no longer easily available.

Betty Lou's band might move four or five times a year—rotating around the region. On extremely rare occasions they would encounter a similar group of humans. They might exchange food or other items, or on even more rare occasions take mates, but those neighboring bands were so infrequently encountered that they did not even consider them to be People. As often as not, they'd fight them.

More on Betty Lou's discovery next time...

Earlier Gardeners

I get a kick out of scientific findings that run counter to the accepted view. Darwin, Galileo, Newton, and Einstein all discovered a more accurate way to comprehend our universe. They each ran counter to their predecessors. (And all of their theories subsequently became amended.) Their descriptions shook up accepted beliefs. It’s the way that science should go.

I also get a kick out of ruminating on the ramifications of new and unexpected scientific findings. I like to play around with how they might alter our current worldview. One recent example is a research finding that human cultivation likely began much earlier than previously thought. The current belief is that our ancestors began to evolve from hunter-gatherers to horticulturists about 10,000 years ago, and then transitioned into an agrarian culture some 5,000 years ago. These recent findings show, however, that we entered our horticultural period much earlier—maybe as long as 20,000 years ago.

If true, this suggests that we were gardeners for far longer than we had been believing. That struck me as possibly quite meaningful, as far as helping to interpret our modern behavior, and giving me some optimism. How so? Well, as horticulturists we began gardening by simply poking a hole in the ground and dropping a seed in it. It was work that required little physical strength. Women could do it, while the men went on the hunt. In horticultural societies the contributions of women and men were equally valued. Our religious sense also began to bloom during that period, so our deities tended to be both male and female.

When our ancestors became serious about farming, we moved from being horticulturists into the agrarian period—a much more intensive form of agriculture, when animals were used to plow and plant. Agrarian work required more strength, so it fell largely to men. Women couldn’t risk miscarriage, so they turned the hard labor of farming over to men. As our skill at farming grew, food surpluses came into being for the first time. This allowed some people to take on non-food jobs, such as priests, scribes, politicians, and artisans. Since men were now in charge, the specialty jobs were filled mostly by men. Women gradually came to be viewed to be of lesser value, even eventually to become demeaned and abused. Children often suffered similar mistreatment in an agrarian culture.

Since the agrarian period is closer to us, we are more familiar with its customs and viewpoints. In fact, modern culture contains many vestiges of patriarchy, in the way we continue to demean women and children. We are struggling to overcome that agrarian worldview. Much more growth awaits us.

But if we were horticulturists for twice as long a period of time than we previously thought, maybe the equal valuation of men and women that prevailed during that period is deeper in our bones than we thought.

Evolutionary science tells us that many of our actions are guided by the extremely long time that we were hunter-gatherers (for as much as 500,000 years). We may have acquired a big brain along the way, but a lot of our unconscious behavior is still patterned after our deep hunter-gatherer ancestors. If so, I welcome the news that we were gentle horticulturalists for much longer than we’ve believed. Maybe that will make our work of getting past our aggressive, patriarchal, agrarian outlook a little easier. We’ve already begun the transition—maybe we’ll succeed sooner than we thought.