Date: Tue, 14 May 1996 09:27:02 -0600
Subject:  herders, farmers, classes 


I re-state, with emphasis added:
> But the idea that agriculture _started_ as a way to feed grain to
> cattle, no way!  This is very expensive cattle feed. 

I don't know about the bible, but if the ancient greeks were correct
about the already ancient Tigris and Euphrates, then such a way of
feeding animals is not limited to modern capitalism [tho cap clearly
takes it to some new extreme].  Point remains that it is a very
expensive way to feed animals.  And in the partial examples you
offer, it is not clear that anybody is doing so as a method of
subsistence, small-scale local production of food.

Not only is grain a very expensive feed, it is also a way to get very
fat animals.  Wild game meat and animals grazed on grass only are
generally lean, and many peoples in all parts of the world explicitly
crave fatty meat the most.  I expect this kind of meat to be produced
as a kind of luxury good.  It would take a lot of land and labor to
do this just for yourself or others, which implies exclusive
land-holding, keeping others out, in the face of growing populations,
i.e. property and classes.

I'm sure it can happen under some circumstances, but not likely as an
_origin_ of agriculture.  Engels and his sources were wrong about
that.  

Adam:  Anyway, rereading Engels, I think you and he agree - he says 
"large scale agriculture, the *cultivation of fields* becomes
possible only after the development of the iron plowshare and
domesticated cattle to pull them.

Lisa:  What, Engels and I agreed?  When?  #:)  How large a field? 
There were no traction animals in all the americas, and no plows at
all, yet great civilizations were fueled by potatoes, tomatoes,
pumpkins and maize grown in "fields".  There were wooden plows in use
in europe for probably a thousand years or more before iron, and most
of africa was working with iron hoes for even longer, and still are
in some places, not plows.  

So sure you can probably work more acres per person-hour, and
possibly get more bushels per acre with plows and oxen than many
other methods.  But "large scale" production in some senses has been
done without that method as well.

Adam:  About Homeric greece - how can walled cities be the product of
a pre class society ? 

Lisa:  Who says they were?  It is possible to have cooperative wall
building with a very low degree of hierarchy and little or no
inequality, there are many examples of this, though usually of
relatively quick and easy fences and stockades.  But Greek
city-states, with kings and armies?  Not pre-class, I agree.

Adam:  Also, the class societies of South America don't seem to be
have significant numbers of domesticated grazing animals ( Engels
says the only possibility was the Llama - ? ).

Lisa:  Llamas were and are kept for wool, hides, meat and as pack
animals in the mountains esp., their smaller relatives for wool
mainly.  But I've never heard of a pastoral culture, which would
accumulate large herds and live nomadically moving with the animals
between pastures.  The Inca built roads to rival the Roman's, but it
was all foot traffic.  Human bearers of stuff were more common than
llamas, I think.

When I think of pastoral people, the Nuer of northeast africa come to
mind, one of the more famously studied people.  Similar and related
to the nearby Dinka and Masai.  The Nuer love their cows, and reflect
this in every aspect of their daily lives, ritual, language, they
even name themselves after their favorite cattle.  The cattle each
have names, their horns are trained to grow in sculptural forms, they
are very tame as they are daily touched, blessed and caressed like
housepets.  The Nuer trade milk products to nearby maize farmers, but
the corn is _not_ for the cattle!  Similar to India, cows live by
eating what people _cannot_ eat - grass.

The conquest / union of farmers by pastoralists that I think is one
likely model for a method of city/class formation.  Some pastoral
peoples have been very famous raiders upon farmers.  Then farmers
could pay tribute to prevent raiding, perhaps in the form of grain...

I bet there's a body of literature on this stuff, I just haven't
found it and read it yet.  So many books, so short a life.

Lisa



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