The transition to sedentism did not depend on the unique characteristics of a particular area. Within a few thousand years, populations became sedentary not only in many regions of the Old World (Middle East, India, China), but also in the New World. The fact that this transition occurred almost simultaneously (at least, by prehistoric standards) in different parts of the world suggests that it was the result of some crucial changes in the evolution of culture-society that coincided with the climate changes at the beginning of the Holocene.

The shift to a food-producing economy was gradual and based on the use of a natural effect that reduced the labor intensity required for growing grain. Just as fire enables the clearing of forests and slash-and-burn creates a nutrient layer for plants and animals useful to humans, periodic ebb and flow in the floodplains of large rivers creates a layer of nutrients for sowing grain. Floods were the natural effect that intelligent and work-shy hunter-gatherers used for agriculture in alluvial plains (Scott 2017, p. 67):

“The general problem with farming—especially plough agriculture—is that it involves so much intensive labor. One form of agriculture, however, eliminates most of this labor: ‘flood-retreat’ (also known as decrue or recession) agriculture. In flood-retreat agriculture, seeds are generally broadcast on the fertile silt deposited by an annual riverine flood. The fertile silt in question is, of course, a ‘transfer by erosion’ of upstream nutrients. This form of cultivation was almost certainly the earliest form of agriculture in the Tigris-Euphrates floodplain, not to mention the Nile Valley. It is still widely practiced today and has been shown to be the most labor-saving form of agriculture regardless of the crop being planted” (Scott 2017, p. 66).

Agriculture was initially just an additional source of food for hunters and gatherers, who settled in the lower reaches of the rivers along the sea coast near rich food sources. For primitive communities, however, abundant food was not the rule, but rather a rare exception:

“For some groups the total foraging effort was relatively low, only a few hours a day. This finding led to foragers being portrayed as ‘the original affluent society,’ living in a kind of material plenty filled with leisure and sleep (Sahlins 1972). Most notably, Dobe !Kung people of the Kalahari Desert in Botswana, living on wild plants and meat, were thought to provide an excellent window on the lives of prehistoric foragers, who allegedly led contented, healthy, and vigorous lives. This conclusion, based on very limited and dubious evidence, must be—and has been—challenged. … A reanalysis of energy expenditure and demographic data collected in the 1960s found that the nutritional status and health of Dobe !Kung ‘were, at best, precarious and, at worst, indicative of a society in danger of extinction’ (Bogin 2011)” (Smil 2017, p. 37).

The subsequent spread of agriculture (at least in Europe) occurred due to the migration of members of agrarian communities, rather than due to hunter-gatherers willingly adopting the agricultural practices of their neighbors (Smil 2017, pp. 43-44). This may suggest that agriculture had no clear advantages over hunting and gathering. The shift to farming represented, in a sense, the collapse of primitive society. James Scott notes that the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture entails a more monotonous rhythm and simpler activities:

“I am tempted to see the late Neolithic revolution, for all its contributions to large-scale societies, as something of a deskilling. Adam Smith’s iconic example of the productivity gains achievable through the division of labor was the pin factory, where each minute step of pin making was broken down into a task carried out by a different worker. Alexis de Tocqueville read The Wealth of Nations sympathetically but asked, ‘What can be expected of a man who has spent twenty years of his life putting heads on pins.’” (Scott 2017, p. 92). “It is no exaggeration to say that hunting and foraging are, in terms of complexity, as different from cereal-grain farming as cereal-grain farming is, in turn, removed from repetitive work on a modern assembly line. Each step represents a substantial narrowing of focus and a simplification of tasks” (ibid., p. 90).

Primitive societies were not societies of affluence. Hunter-gatherers did not lead lives of idleness, but neither were they forced to work hard or monotonously. With the exception of flood farming, agriculture constitutes a much more laborious occupation than hunting and gathering:

“As Ester Boserup and others have observed, there is no reason why a forager in most environments would shift to agriculture unless forced to by population pressure or some form of coercion” (Scott 2017, p. 20). “Why would foragers in their right mind choose the huge increase in drudgery entailed by fixed-field agriculture and animal husbandry unless they had, as it were, a pistol at their collective temple? We know that even contemporary hunter-gatherers, reduced to living in resource-poor environments, still spend only half their time in anything we might call subsistence labor” (ibid., p. 93).

If the transition from hunting and gathering to herding and farming involved an obvious simplification of life and more arduous work, why did it happen at all? The reason may have been the creation of surpluses or reserves that reduced environmental uncertainty, allowed time and resources to be allocated more efficiently, and thus freed up for activities other than food production. Religion, war, crafts and trade were the causes of farming and herding, at least insofar as farming and herding were their causes. Since the simplification of the individual live was accompanied by the complication of community live, individuals had to adapt to the rhythms of culture rather than nature. The transition to agricultural production occurred at the level of culture-society rather than at the level of individuals, many of whom suffered from this transition. The main driving force behind the transition was competition between communities, their leaders, and their meanings.

The prerequisite and at the same time consequence of the transition to a sedentary lifestyle and agriculture was the increase in population density. While the average population density in hunter-gatherer communities was 25 people per 100 square kilometers (Smil 2017, p. 28), slash-and-burn agriculture made it possible to feed 100 times more people: from 2,000 for corn farmers in North America to 6,000 for rice and tuber farmers in Southeast Asia (ibid., p. 45). Finally, in such developed agricultural production as the rice fields of the Ming and Qing dynasties, the corn plantations of the Aztecs, or the potato fields of the Incas, the population density reached tens of thousands of people per 100 square kilometers of cultivated area (ibid., pp. 95, 98-99).

Scott shows that the domestication of humans, plants and animals and their crowding into the domus, worsened their health and increased the mortality rate. At the same time, the transition to sedentary life increased the birth rate so much that it more than compensated for the increased mortality: the value of children as labor force is higher for a peasant than for a hunter-gatherer. So the rise of agrarian societies led to the displacement of hunter-gatherers (Scott 2017, pp. 82-83, 113-114).

We saw above that the emergence of culture became the first “needs trap”: when hominids resorted to meanings for self-reproduction, they could no longer remain animals, but had to evolve into humans. The transition to agriculture proved to be the second “needs trap.” Once an agrarian culture-society had emerged, it could not return to the hunter-gatherer state since it would not have been able to feed itself.

More people meant more meaning and faster evolution. We can identify four variables that influence the level of complexity and speed of evolution of a culture-society: (1) diversity; (2) connectedness; (3) interdependence; (4) adaptation or learning (Page 2009, pp. 10-12). The increase in population size and density in early agrarian societies affected all four variables.

“Human population grew in a sort of chain reaction in which greater density of occupation of territory tended to produce new opportunities for specialization and thus led to an increase of individual productivity and in turn to a further increase of numbers. There also developed among such large numbers of people not only a variety of innate attributes but also an enormous variety of streams of cultural traditions among which their great intelligence enabled them to select—particularly during their prolonged adolescence” (Hayek 1988-2022, vol. 1, p. 126).

The increase in population, its density and specialization associated with the development of agricultural production led to greater diversity, connectedness and interdependence: people became more different, the number and intensity of their contacts expanded.

“Prehistoric changes brought about by better tools, the mastery of fire, and better hunting strategies were very slow, unfolding over tens of thousands of years. The subsequent adoption and intensification of permanent farming lasted for millennia. Its most important consequence was a large increase in population densities, leading to social stratification, occupational specialization, and incipient urbanization” (Smil 2017, p. 407).

Nevertheless, increasing population density, coupled with the concentration of livestock, domesticated plants and parasites, often led to massive epidemics and the collapse of entire civilizations. In an agrarian society, the vast majority of the population can only satisfy their minimum needs through subsistence farming. The primitive economy relied mainly on agriculture, on the achievements of which the slow evolution of society largely depended. We would not be mistaken if we said that about three-quarters to four-fifths of the traditional labor force was employed in agriculture (cf. Livi Bacci 2000, p. 12).

According to Thomas Malthus, in a traditional society, the population grows geometrically, while food production grows arithmetically. Geometric population growth with arithmetical production growth is a path to the Malthusian trap, that is, to the crisis and death of the entire society or that part of it that cannot feed itself. An agrarian society remains, to a large extent, part of its natural environment: the development of its meanings constantly encounters natural constraints—be they environmental disasters, crop failures or epidemics.