The Human Web: A Bird's-Eye View of World History

The authors’ main argument in this section, that “in unusually rich and diversified landscapes, communities of hunters and gatherers found it convenient to settle down for all or most of the year” (26), thematically develops The Role of Technology and Environment in Shaping Human Societies. To support their assertion, the authors highlight how humans leveraged specific features of their environments and implemented new technologies. For example, agricultural expansion into the forested regions of Eurasia involved clearing deciduous trees to allow more naturally occurring sunlight and rainwater to stimulate grain maturation. In China, early farmers “hoed soft, fertile loess (i.e., windblown) soils, and depended on fluctuating monsoon rainfall” (33) before developing the water engineering technology that enabled rice cultivation. The slash and burn cycle used in the forested Eurasian region “created a moving frontier of settlement” (30), while rice cultivation allowed the Northern Chinese to expand south and overtake tropical gardening communities. The authors establish a clear connection between food production and expansion of the human web, and this connection highlights the interplay among humans, the environment, and technology.

The text treats each region separately. Table 2.1, “Domestications of Plants and Animals,” and Map 2.1, “Multiple Separate Inventions of Agriculture” (26-27), show parallel and simultaneous developments, even though the different regions were not yet tightly connected and in some cases did not interact at all. The authors explicitly make the point about parallels across disconnected societies at the end of Part 4. However, these parallels do not mean equal and even development across the web. An underlying factor in the invention of agriculture is how environmental characteristics and technological capabilities conferred certain advantages that began to shape power dynamics within the human web:

America, like sub-Saharan Africa, lagged behind Eurasia in developing new sources of power over nature and new ways of coordinating human effort. Eurasia had the advantages of greater size, far more numerous domesticable species, and, above all, a more capacious communications web embracing its much larger population. All of these contributed to an accelerating rate of invention and change in that part of the world (36).

Moreover, the authors note that because people in temperate climates were less susceptible to disease than those in tropical climates, populations in temperate regions grew more rapidly. These early environmental factors played a key role in how power dynamics developed in the human web.

Additionally, the authors hint at modern ideologies that originated within this early period. They suggest that the concept of private land ownership took root when gardeners “developed a sense of personal and familial ownership on the strength of the sweat they expended and the proximity of the garden to their home” (27), and fixed communities thus “replaced the sharing ethos of wandering bands” (27). The authors note how proximity to neighbors encouraged social solidarity, augmenting simple kinship ties, and imply that such social relationships heralded the beginnings of nationalism.