Wie revolutionär war die „neolithische Revolution“?

In the 1930s, the archaeologist Gordon Childe coined the term “Neolithic Revolution” to describe the transition from foraging to agriculture in the Levant about 10.000 years ago. By analogy with the Industrial Revolution, the concept’s primary focus is on a change in the “mode of production”. Recent scholarship has rightly pointed out that this transition was not sudden; nor is there a clear dividing line between foraging and agriculture. Nevertheless, as this article argues, there are good reasons to continue using Childe’s concept. First, the slow but steady development of agriculture has, in many ways, fuelled societal change. Second, for climatic and ecological reasons, permanent sedentism became possible only after the onset of the Holocene, and it has proved irreversible so far, as it tends to stimulate population growth and, by extension, requires the production of an agricultural surplus. Third, larger and denser forms of settlements call for new mechanisms and institutions of social integration. It is precisely these aspects that constitute the revolutionary moment of the Neolithic.