" institutional innovation did not follow transition to agriculture, but preceded it. "
"Archaeological evidence suggests that this was a sedentary town of perhaps 500 people dependent on hunting and gathering. The town appears to have had a very rich religious and symbolic life. People were buried under houses, which embedded the skulls of bulls in their walls, and included clay figurines and wall paintings.
But this is the sort of stuff that is supposed to happen after the Neolithic Revolution, not before."
ace and robo
they site a archeologist 'named Smith':
"people established sedentary settlements, their concepts of who owned resources likely became more restrictive as they strengthened their claim on the surrounding countryside, which they viewed more and more as being for their exclusive use. By 12,5000 BP, then, hunting and gathering societies began to adopt a way of life that set the logistic, economic, and organizational groundwork for the emergence of village farming communities…many of the basic elements of social organization essential to village life were already in place before the first experiments with cultivation…"
so why did they sedate themselves ?
