The Neolithic of the Southern Levant

A new overview is given about the Neolithic of the Southern Levant in "Evolutionary Anthropology". Mostly not new data - but people outside the area of specialists often do not know very much about this crucial phase of human history. So it should be useful. - See also this.

Barley domesticated in China 7000 BC

Barley seems to be domesticated in Northern China also. And that's different to wheat, that is domesticated only in the Fertile Crescent:

Over the past decades, archaeologists have unearthed the earliest remains of domesticated barley at sites in the Fertile Crescent that date back 10,500 years. But there is also evidence for barley cultivation about 9000 years ago at sites further east in Central Asia. (...)
Evolutionary biologists Peter Morrell and Michael Clegg (...) sequenced genes of wild and domesticated barley from the two regions. (..) Morrell and Clegg conclude that barley was domesticated at least twice, first in the Fertile Crescent and then between 1500 to 3000 kilometers further east in Central Asia. (...)

Emotions in history

Emotions can rise high discussing the greater aspects of world history: Why rise of culture? Why decline of culture? Why first agriculture around 10.000 BC? Why cultural change around 400 AD? A lot of details have to be taken into account, if you want to get the story right.
And because history is made by the emotions of humans, it is possible, that discussion about (such) causes of history can also rise emotions. ;-)
So there were some quite interesting discussions on "Gene Expression" about those questions (here and here), that I do not want to repeat here.
But surely, possibility to continue discussion exists.

Ok, only to put an answer to Razib's last argument. Razib says: "when i say i did 'research' on the peasant's war of 1525, i mean that i took a course where we studied primary sources about that war for the whole term. i tend to, obviously, disagree with the assertion that there would have been 'No peasant's war in that scale without Luther,' but you'll have to take my word for it since i'm not going to dig up the books i have on the topic and go chapter & verse."

It is possible to say to this, that we know about peasant "revolts" all over Europe before and after the peasant's war of 1525, but never again and never before in that scale, ranging from Saxonia to Austria to Alsace, Tyrol ... . For some of the peasant leaders it was meant to be a national (mostly political) revolution. That's right. But all that couldn't have taken place without the massiv attack of Luther against the pope in Rome and his famous "Freedom of a Christian" ("Von der Freiheit eines Christenmenschen"). This gave the peasants the arguments and the "emotions" for longing for political and local freedoms also against the local authorities, against the nobility, against the bishops. In that scale it was never seen before, never seen again.

Why agriculture?

Razib Khan is discussing the factors that gave rise to agriculture in humankind. Several years ago I have made very extensive studies about the first agrarian societies in the Levant (12.000 to 8.000 years before present) also, so I have to say something about that:

Tuareg people and other nomads are gathering seeds of (wild) plants only, if they're VERY, VERY hungry. It is a very hard work, much more hard work to live by harvesting and (later) growing corn, than to eat fruits of trees or game without much work. This is, what archaeologists have brought out in the last years.

So agriculture must be the product of something like "Benedictine" or "protestant" work ethic like in industrial revolution in later times. There are some hints, that the first agrarian societies in the Levant ("pre-pottery neolithic" = PPNA and PPNB) have been societies with strong social control (city "despots" and other things).

Also it seems, that there has been a lot of "group selection" between the inhabitants of the first agricultural cities in the Levant. A lot of fluctuations, abandoning of old city places, founding new ones, conquering others and so on. See also the first "fortification" of humankind in PPNA-Jericho. See also the "Helwan point culture"-expansion from north to south at the beginning of PPNB with its rectangle grill-plan-houses.

Human groups with strong religious feelings AND a hard "work ethic" have often a lot of children also. Hard work ethic WITHOUT strong religious feelings often fails to prodcue very much children - as we all know.