HOW MANY PEOPLE ON EARTH? — DESMOND 551 



The earliest scene of settled village-farming communities appears 

 to have been in the Near East. Kobert J. Braidwood, Professor of 

 the Oriental Institute of Chicago, and Field Director of the Jarmo 

 Project, a recently studied archeological site in Iraq, says : 



It is probably very diflScult for us now to conceptualize fully (or to exagger- 

 ate) the consequences of the first appearance of effective food production. The 

 whole range of human existence, from the biological (including diet, demog- 

 raphy, disease, and so on) through the cultural (social organization, politics, 

 religion, esthetics, and so forth) bands of the spectrum took on completely new 

 dimensions. 



Braidwood described the hilly piedmont and intermontane regions 

 surrounding the great "Fertile Crescent" which starts in the valleys 

 of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, sweeps around to the north to 

 touch southern Turkey and Syria, then curves south to the shores of 

 the Mediterranean and into Egypt. One radioactive-carbon date sug- 

 gests that this development was well advanced by 4000 B.C. 



Sheep, goats, pigs, cattle, and some kind of horselike animal were 

 used by those living in the area. Their plants were wheat and barley. 

 Braidwood notes that some sort of hybridization or mutation, particu- 

 larly in domesticated plants, must have taken place before certain spe- 

 cies could have been moved to other areas. However, they seem to 

 have moved into the Danube Valley by 4000 B.C., and into western 

 Europe by 2500 B.C. 



In other words, man was learning to utilize his environment more 

 efficiently ; thus it could support more people than ever before. But 

 numbers were still regulated by the food-producing quality of the 

 land. Population grew in times of plenty and declined vrhen food 

 became scarce and when disease decimated large populations, as it 

 did in Europe during the Dark Ages. 



During the Bronze Age, man began to use copper and bronze and 

 to build towns, cities, and states. Kings, advanced religions, social 

 classes, writing, and enduring monuments, such as the Nile pyramids, 

 appeared during this period. The Iron Age brought iron metallurgy, 

 the invention of the alphabet, the use of coined money, and the spread 

 of commerce and navigation. 



The early and great empires and cultures developed : those of Egypt, 

 Rome, and Greece ; of King Asoka in India ; of the Han dynasty in 

 China ; and, later, the empires of the Mayas and the Incas in the New 

 World. The Hindu, Confucian, Buddhist, Jewish, Christian, Mus- 

 lim, and other great religions emerged. 



THE CITY— PERIOD II 



The great cities of ancient times rose in rich valleys adjacent to the 

 Mediterranean, the Red Sea, and the Persian Gulf, along the Indus 

 and the Nile, and along the Yangtze in China. The first great urban 



