The history of Homo sapiens is long. Ther have been so many rises and falls in climate known as interglacials and glacials during the Quaternary. Who does civilization not follow this pace and it emerged only during the early Holocene?

read this interesting paper by Brian Fagan

The long summer: how climate changed civilization

And this is free from the web:

http://www.google.nl/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=beyond%20the%20younger%20dryas&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CCYQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fleilan.yale.edu%2Fpubs%2Ffiles%2Fweissdryas2002.pdf&ei=t8SrUK6ILYaV0QWIoYDYCw&usg=AFQjCNFodPlX7prDDF8di3vonLlBcIV55w

Hi all,

A very interesting question. For true civilizations, with division of labour/role specializations, a relatively large population would be required and this is difficult to achieve through hunter-gathering. That this only happened "recently" is down to the time it took Homo sapiens to evolve, expand its range and population size.  As above, this is also closely linked to climatic amelioration after the last glacial maximum:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121018130834.htm

Cheers, Fred.

A very recent update from North America:

Population boom preceded early farming

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160802104526.htm

As for the latest link:

this is not early Holocene and then the question: is agriculture synonymous with civilization?

Hi Harry,

I don't think it needs to be. Good cases have been made for (at least largely) hunter-gathering communities forming large towns/small cities in areas such as Turkey/The Levant.

The latest link just reinforces the point that population growth began, at various times and places, before agriculture became firmly established.

Talk of the Devil!

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160804135901.htm

saw this already some days ago via

http://www.archaeologica.org/NewsPage.htm

http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/summer-2016/article/hunter-gatherers-experimented-with-farming-in-turkey-before-migrating-to-europe

Many thanks for sharing the links.

Frederick

The questioner stresses the early Holocene and as a climatologist I am also very curious why or even if "civilization" has its origin in the younger Dryas

Hi Harry,

Whilst the earliest civilizations may well date back to the early Holocene, the situation is that different civilizations arose at different times in various places worldwide. Looking at the circumstances surrounding each of these major transformations in palaeoeconomy, including the later ones, can help inform us as to the "why, how and when" of the earliest one(s). If we only consider the very earliest example(s), we may well omit some critical evidence.

Cheers, Fred.

Frederick

Point well taken. Wonder what the questioner has to say and why he asked the question

This is indeed a fascinating milestone in human culture, so  I was very surprised to see that it had generated so little debate initially. If it hadn't happened we certainly wouldn't be able to have this conversation via this forum!

Another little complicating factor - what if you belonged to a hunter-gatherer-fisher community?

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160811085936.htm

I've seen huge ancient shell middens (also packed with fish bones, but far fewer (wild) mammal ones) on the Scottish islands personally. Similar lifestyles in areas such as Australia continue to support traditional Aboriginal cultures to the present day. Clearly agriculture is/was not essential to the ongoing survival of such cultures. However, it does represent a limiting factor to population expansion, which does seem to be a, perhaps the, major trigger for producing settled agricultural societies and eventually civilizations. Famously, "cultural taboos" prevented the switch to agriculture/adoption of more advanced technologies in some societies. In others, such as the above British example, the transition to farming seems to have been merely delayed. It will be very interesting to see the results of their ongoing study.

Some more recent research:

Similarly to the shell-midden story above, the significance of fish in pre-agricultural communities may be underestimated

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160829163257.htm

Mesolithic switch to agriculture in The Balkans

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160829163310.htm

and, most intriguingly, early human behaviour enhancing their environment

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160830113739.htm

It makes you wonder when various cultures first realised the benefits of treating the soils they were farming.

The Balkan agriculture is a result of influx from Anatolia; the question is why the original invention was done at the early Holocene; I"d say even say just before that and as a reaction to what? climate change during the younger Dryas but as you say in a population that had substantially grown by favourite conditions before that period

Like to remind that the physical condition of the early farmers was worse than that of the preceding hunter-gatherers

Yes indeed. I guess they either had to stick with their agricultural efforts, move  - or die!

It also makes you wonder at what stage different cultures abandoned their more nomadic ways and became attached, or more correctly adapted to, their immediate environments? Again, this clearly happened at different times in different places, but its research like the above that will hopefully start to narrow down the "why(s)?".

This research concerns a much earlier time than we are discussing here, but suggests that climate change may be over-estimated as a driving force for cultural evolution:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/09/160901093140.htm

Widespread evidence of prehistoric dairying discovered along the Mediterranean coast:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/11/161115120204.htm

Also, evidence of semi-permanent Mesolithic settlement based on a fishing economy:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/11/161114082236.htm

Ancient history of maize domestication:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-37999506

Archaeological excavation unearths evidence of turkey domestication 1,500 years ago

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/11/161121115523.htm

Native Americans raised turkeys long before first Thanksgiving

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/11/161121111328.htm

Happy New Year all!

An interesting news story to start 2017 -

Humans occupied Tibetan Plateau thousands of years earlier than previously thought:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/01/170105143450.htm

Thanks for sharing this array of  fascinating news. The early-Holocene settlement of the TP before the arrival of agriculture seems impossible. How people make life without permanent food supply in this high, cold, and anoxyic area.  

Baltic hunter-gatherers began farming without influence of migration, ancient DNA suggests:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/02/170202122800.htm

Persistent tropical foraging in the highlands of terminal Pleistocene/Holocene New Guinea: Foraging lifestyles persisted in New Guinean tropical forest environments even after the advent of farming 8,000 years ago

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/02/170207105340.htm

Prehistoric alpine farming in the Bernese Oberland

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170406152313.htm 

New DNA research shows true migration route of early farming in Europe 8,000 years ago: Spread of agriculture throughout Europe followed migration into the Mediterranean from the Near East - thousands of years earlier than widely believed

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170406102603.htm 

In search of the wild fava bean

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170410095649.htm 

Why did hunter-gatherers first begin farming?

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/05/170516080810.htm 

Ancient Peru: Major discovery of early human life: Elaborate baskets reveal sophisticated societies in the late pleistocene and early Holocene ages

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/05/170524141745.htm

Ancient DNA evidence shows hunter-gatherers and farmers were intimately linked:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/05/170525123052.htm 

Earliest human-made climate change took place 11,500 years ago 

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/06/170605110059.htm 

Crops evolving ten millennia before experts thought

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/10/171023094942.htm

On the origins of agriculture, researchers uncover new clues

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/06/180604112558.htm

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