Does anyone even listen to creationists these days?

[Rhyfelwyr]

Agriculture, leading to an ever greater proportion of the population not engaged in producing food but instead producing services or inventing stuff. With writing becoming more complex to keep track of the food surpluses, it's meant that intellectual development can span generations. And just about everything else has collected momentum from these two developments. Food and knowledge.

I meant to present "agriculture, settlement and civilization" as a package, not to suggest that they are not directly related.

This package appears uniformly across the world within a Young Earth Creationist timeframe, indeed it fits very neatly with it. It makes a lot less sense with evolutionary theory, which posits that intelligent humans and proto-humans were roaming the earth for hundreds of thousands of years, during which time they became isolated from each other and were living in totally different environments with different wildlife, foodstuffs, potential crops, climates and demographic pressures - only to inexplicably develop the "package" of agriculture, settlement and civilization at almost once without any common evolutionary pressures.

[Pannonian]

I meant to present "agriculture, settlement and civilization" as a package, not to suggest that they are not directly related.

This package appears uniformly across the world within a Young Earth Creationist timeframe, indeed it fits very neatly with it. It makes a lot less sense with evolutionary theory, which posits that intelligent humans and proto-humans were roaming the earth for hundreds of thousands of years, during which time they became isolated from each other and were living in totally different environments with different wildlife, foodstuffs, potential crops, climates and demographic pressures - only to inexplicably develop the "package" of agriculture, settlement and civilization at almost once without any common evolutionary pressures.

There is a time border in the form of the last Ice Age. If you go by the Diamond idea of how civilisation evolved, you'd need an ice age-free expanse across Eurasia, which AFAIK limits civilisation to the last 10,000 years or so. Give some time for agriculture to be discovered and developed, and the time frame fits the so called young earth numbers fairly reasonably.

[Rhyfelwyr]

There is a time border in the form of the last Ice Age. If you go by the Diamond idea of how civilisation evolved, you'd need an ice age-free expanse across Eurasia, which AFAIK limits civilisation to the last 10,000 years or so. Give some time for agriculture to be discovered and developed, and the time frame fits the so called young earth numbers fairly reasonably.

There was no shortage of temperate, desert and tropical regions during the last Ice Age, all with their own ecosystems and evolutionary pressures, and all of which had been present in inhabited areas for hundreds of thousands of years (according to secular timeframes). Why then the sudden advent of civilization?

[CBR]

There was no shortage of temperate, desert and tropical regions during the last Ice Age, all with their own ecosystems and evolutionary pressures, and all of which had been present in inhabited areas for hundreds of thousands of years (according to secular timeframes). Why then the sudden advent of civilization?

Was Agriculture Impossible During the Pleistocene but Mandatory during the Holocene? (pdf)

Nonetheless, we propose that much about the origin of agriculture can be understood in terms of two propositions: Agriculture Was Impossible During The Last Glacial. During the last glacial, climates were variable and very dry over large areas. Atmospheric levels of CO2 were low. Probably most important, last-glacial climates were characterized by high-amplitude fluctuations on time scales of a decade or less to a millennium. Because agricultural subsistence systems are vulnerable to weather extremes, and because the cultural evolution of subsistence systems making heavy, specialized, use of plant resources occurs relatively slowly, agriculture could not evolve.

Constraints on the Development of Agriculture (pdf)

The development of agriculture was limited by external constraints, mainly climate, before the Holocene and mainly by social institutions after that. Population size and growth was important but ultimately did not determine where and why agriculture evolved.

[Rhyfelwyr]

CBR, good argument. But aren't a lot of crops grown globally in very different climates?

[Pannonian]

CBR, good argument. But aren't a lot of crops grown globally in very different climates?

The various crop + stock combos need to get from place to place, hence Eurasia being the powerhouse of civilisation. If Eurasia isn't hospitable enough, there is no spread of agriculture.

[Rhyfelwyr]

The various crop + stock combos need to get from place to place, hence Eurasia being the powerhouse of civilisation. If Eurasia isn't hospitable enough, there is no spread of agriculture.

Agriculture developed independently and at around the same time in Australia, Papua, the Americas and the Far East from what I have read.

That it happened to lead to civilization in the ancient Near East is I believe to do with the requirements of hosting agriculture in such a place. Max Weber says a fair bit about this - building the irrigation canals in Mesopotamia that were necessary for agriculture meant people had to band together under leaders and develop a system of almost slave labour. This process didn't happen in places that could rely on rainfall etc.

[CBR]

CBR, good argument. But aren't a lot of crops grown globally in very different climates?

Today, yes, but it does not look like agriculture popped up in all types of climate at the same time. There seem to have been numerous preagricultural permanent settlements, yet not all grew into the bigger types of civilizations e.g. the big river cultures.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Outside the US I think Creationism mostly exists in the minds of its opponents, I get pretty sick of the whole "do you believe in evolution?" question when people find I out I believe in God and want him to send me back in time to save the Roman Empire so we can all have jetpacks and have colonies on Saturn's moons.