life.
While it might be collectively desirable to become
sedentary, this doesn’t mean that it will necessarily happen.
A mobile group of hunter-gatherers would have to agree to
do this, or someone would have to force them. Some
archaeologists have suggested that increasing population
density and declining living standards were key factors in
the emergence of sedentary life, forcing mobile people to
stay in one place. Yet the density of Natufian sites is no
greater than that of previous groups, so there does not
appear to be evidence of increasing population density.
Skeletal and dental evidence does not suggest
deteriorating health, either. For instance, food shortage
tends to create thin lines in people’s tooth enamel, a
condition called hypoplasia. These lines are in fact less
prevalent in Natufian people than in later farming people.
More important is that while sedentary life had pluses, it
also had minuses. Conflict resolution was probably much
harder for sedentary groups, since disagreements could be
resolved less easily by people or groups merely moving
away. Once people had built permanent buildings and had
more assets than they could carry, moving away was a
much less attractive option. So villages needed more
effective ways of resolving conflict and more elaborate
notions of property. Decisions would have to be made
about who had access to which piece of land close to the
village, or who got to pick fruit from which stand of trees
and fish in which part of the stream. Rules had to be
developed, and the institutions that made and enforced
rules had to be elaborated.
In order for sedentary life to emerge, it therefore seems
plausible that hunter-gatherers would have had to be forced
to settle down, and this would have to have been preceded
by an institutional innovation concentrating power in the
hands of a group that would become the political elite,
enforce property rights, maintain order, and also benefit
from their status by extracting resources from the rest of
society. In fact, a political revolution similar to that initiated
by King Shyaam, even if on a smaller scale, is likely to have
been the breakthrough that led to sedentary life.
The archaeological evidence indeed suggests that the
Natufians developed a complex society characterized by