title: The Evolution of Human Societies: From Foraging Group to Agrarian State, Second Edition
author:  Allen W. Johnson 
description: "Johnson and Earle show in masterly detail how societies articulate to their environments and . . . how they evolve." (<I>Ethnohistory</I>)
zlib_text: Refuge
  
  
  by Isaac Asimov, Rob Chilson
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Introduction by Isaac Asimov
  
  
  Through eighty percent of the history of Homo sapiens, all human beings were
  hunters and gatherers. Of necessity, they were wanderers, for to stay in one
  place would mean gathering all there was of vegetable food and driving away
  all there was of animal food—and starvation would follow.
  
  
  The only habitations such wanderers (or “nomads”) could have would have to be
  either parts of the environment, such as caves, or light and movable
  artifacts, such as tents.
  
  
  Agriculture, however, came into being some ten thousand years ago and that
  introduced a great change.
  
  
  Farms, unlike human beings and animals, are not mobile. The need to take care
  of farms and agricultural produce nailed the farmers to the ground. The more
  they grew dependent upon the harvest to maintain their swollen numbers (too
  great for most to survive if they had to return to hunting and gathering), the
  more hopelessly immobile they became. The