Agriculture and Settlement Began Only About 10,000 Years Ago
Only 10,000 years? It sounds long to us, but on the scale of evolution it is brief. Before humans began to cultivate the land, roughly 10,000 years ago, we lived as hunter-gatherers for millions of years. Walking upright began about six million years ago. Over those vast spans, our bodies took shape under the pressures of lifestyle and environment. Modern humans, Homo sapiens, have existed for about 300,000 years, so for most of our history we were nomadic hunters and gatherers. Evolution moves more slowly than culture, which is why our digestive system still resembles that of hunter-gatherers, even though our food and daily life are now very different.
The prehistoric hunter-gatherer relied on seasonal roots and seeds and on the animals he managed to catch, depending on place and season. He kept moving, shifting to new areas when food ran out. Many researchers argue that our ancestors’ diet tended to supply more vitamin C and fiber, less salt, and sometimes less fat than modern diets. Calcium intake varied depending on local environments and access to animal foods. Parts of our metabolism still reflect that world. The body’s tendency to store fat, for example, fits a rhythm of feast and famine. This is often described as an evolutionary mismatch model: when we overeat, our body stores reserves for a scarcity that never comes.
Agricultural settlement brought a narrower, less varied diet based on what people could grow and preserve. It also changed patterns of physical activity. Archaeologists have found skeletons from early farming periods with cartilage damage, linked to bent postures and repetitive tasks such as threshing grain. Even so, people settled and built the societies we live in today, first agricultural and later industrial.
Alongside the farming path, another track emerged. Some groups moved from hunting and gathering into herding and migration. This became the nomadic way of life. Both farming and nomadism differ from hunter-gathering, yet they developed along separate routes.
Were these two paths truly so different, or closer than we think?
Throughout history, myths and stories have staged the tension between nomads and farmers. In these tales, nomads appear as shepherds and meat-eaters, and agriculturalists as farmers and grain-eaters. The contrast is symbolic. Nomads also ate plants, and settled people ate meat, but the stories sharpened the difference.
Some of the earliest and best known examples come from Sumer. The Sumerian “Disputations,” part of that culture’s wisdom literature, set opposing forces of nature against each other. In one text, two brothers, Winter and Summer, compete to be “Farmer of the Gods.” Winter stands for crops and cultivation, Summer for animals. The gods choose Winter because he brings life to the land, and in the end the brothers reconcile. In these myths, the shepherd often acts aggressively while the farmer is portrayed as moderate.
The Jewish tradition gives a different picture and a harsher ending. In Genesis, Cain the farmer kills his brother Abel the shepherd. God favors Abel’s animal offering, the firstborn of his flock and their fat portions, over Cain’s offering from the soil. Many commentators read this as a reflection of the long tension between nomadic herders and settled farmers, especially in the Near East where agriculture first flourished.
Centuries later, Rome fought long wars with nomadic “barbarians.” I will not explore the wars themselves here, but the food symbols matter. Rome is remembered as a cradle of civilization. Beyond its frontiers, across a vast belt from Central Asia to Rome’s eastern borders, lived many nomadic tribes supported by herding. They had complex systems of rule and alliance, yet their mobility left fewer written traces.
For political reasons, Rome drew a sharp line. Romans cast themselves as skilled farmers who drew life from the soil, while “barbarians” were raiders who lived on meat. The reality was more complicated. Rome, like many ancient cultures, sacrificed animals, ate meat, and hunted. Nomadic peoples did not live on meat alone. The contrast worked mainly as a symbolic opposition.
Rome’s symbols were bread, wine, and olive oil, foods that require time and a fixed place. Grapes must ferment, dough must rise, olives must be pressed. This was culture, rooted in agriculture. Nomads were symbolized by meat, butter, and beer, foods that can be prepared quickly and even on the move. Roman writers used this contrast to argue that their society’s relationship to the land was deeper and more “civilized.”
But did nomads truly lack a relationship with the land?
Every society tells stories to justify itself and to set itself apart. The truth is more complex. Cultures have always moved along a spectrum, from hunting and gathering with nature to farming the land. Even today, some more traditional communities around the world raise crops and still gather wild herbs in spring. Rome and the so-called barbarians also traded goods, not only blows.
The Arab thinker Ibn Khaldun, writing in North Africa in the 14th century, offered another lens. In the Muqaddimah (Introduction to the Science of History), he set out principles for how societies develop. Writing from a world where nomadism was central, and in an empire founded by nomads, he could weigh both strengths and weaknesses. He argued that many diseases stem from excess food, and that settled peoples, with their abundance and variety, suffered more illness. Bedouins, by contrast, ate little, used few spices, lived in clean air, and moved constantly. Their digestion was more complete, their bodies healthier, and they needed few if any physicians.
Nomads ate what the season allowed. In the desert, that often meant mostly milk. Their proteins came from milk and meat, and in some groups also from blood. They preserved food only for short stretches. Some even sowed small plots and returned months later to harvest. Their diet remained tied to movement and, in that sense, close to hunter-gatherers: reliance on wild plants, little storage, constant travel. In some extreme cold regions, such as the Arctic, nomadic groups relied almost entirely on animal foods in winter.
Nomadic diets vary across the world, yet the principle repeats. People take what they need from nature and little more. This way of eating is closer to humanity before 8000 BCE than to us today, and it fits our metabolism more closely.
Nomadic Aspects In Our Region
Henry Baker Tristram, often called the father of zoological research in the Land of Israel, traveled here in 1863. Living as a nomad, he described simple foods, hard work, and traditional practices such as churning butter in goatskin bags and baking coarse flatbreads in embers.
Felix Fabri, a 15th-century pilgrim, described Bedouins as unclean by European standards, yet noted that they often lived to old age and survived long periods of hunger on diets of roasted meat and fish, milk, and gathered roots and plants.
Travelers’ accounts from the region consistently highlight milk as the Bedouin staple. In the desert, milk ferments quickly. People made fermented drinks from camel, donkey, and sheep milk. They produced hard salty cheese, churned butter in goatskin bags, and clarified butter (smen) to store for months. At times, milk served as both drink and food. Meat was eaten mainly when animals were no longer useful for milk, wool, or labor, and it was roasted on hot stones or eaten raw.
They also gathered and stored wheat and barley. Grains were ground only as needed and baked into simple flatbread. Accounts describe Bedouins kneading dough on sheepskin garments and baking it in embers, living almost entirely on this coarse bread, with a few roasted peas in the morning and wild herbs gathered along the way.
They collected wild roots, plants, honey, fruits, and even locusts. The 7th-century bishop Arculf, as recorded by Adomnán in De locis sanctis, wrote that poor Bedouins ate locusts fried in oil.
Because nomadic diets and ways of life echo most of human history, they still have what to teach us. Eating small amounts of natural food, gathering wild herbs, walking outdoors, and moving our bodies help us turn food into energy. We do not need to return to hunting and gathering, but perhaps we can draw a little closer.
Notes
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The prehistoric assumptions here are based on archaeological findings and are broadly accepted by scholars.
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The observations about nomads apply when they live apart from settled society.
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It is difficult to generalize about nomads in this region because several climates meet here, producing several nomadic patterns.
