How and under what circumstances did the productive economy arise, on what basis did it develop and what was the most ancient agriculture? These are questions that experts have been working on for centuries. The results of recent archaeological research have shown that the history of agriculture should be extended by several millennia. However, much remains unclear, primarily because archaeological sources, especially those dating back to ancient times, are too fragmentary and often do not allow for unambiguous interpretation. However, there are important sources, the content of which is not fully exhausted. These are ethnographic data on the features of the economy of various societies of hunters, fishermen and gatherers.

Already more than 100 years ago, some researchers, in particular those who observed the life of the Australian Aborigines, noted their practice, to some extent resembling early agricultural. The aborigines not only used a wide variety of edible plants for food, but also had tools and skills that were important technical prerequisites for the transition to agriculture. They had digging sticks, trowels, baskets, wooden dishes, wicker bags, in some places - pestles, mortars and devices for storing food supplies. Summarizing these data, A. N. Maksimov once showed that some groups of Australians had already mastered such techniques as reaping, threshing, sifting grains, grinding, kneading dough and baking tortillas, and in some places even basic plant care took place. In its rudimentary form, all early agricultural skills were found there, except for one-intentional tillage .1
Subsequent studies not only confirmed the validity of this conclusion, but also made it possible to study in detail some types of practices that existed among various groups of hunters, gatherers and fishermen, which directly led to the domestication (domestication) of wild plants with their subsequent cultivation, i.e. to agriculture. First of all, this applies to artificial vegetation burns, which are known to the vast majority of such groups. Fire promotes a more intensive metabolism in nature, in particular, the increased growth of grasses and shrubs needed by ruminants, and sometimes played a significant role in the human diet. Regular fires could contribute to mutations and the emergence of new plant species. The extent of intentional use of fire by hunters and gatherers and its impact on the natural environment is debatable issue 2 . Some attach great importance to fire, linking it with the expansion of steppe areas due to retreating forests or the extinction of ancient large mammals, and its role in primitive farming is defined as "agriculture with a burning brand" or"primitive cattle breeding". Others point out that the fire was not used so regularly and in limited areas of the territory, and its direct cause was certain hunting techniques, while the gradual changes in the natural environment caused by it were only a side effect. Indeed, according to surveys conducted, Australian Aborigines were not always aware of the future consequences of artificial fires.

Be that as it may, the fire led to an increase in the density of biomass and thereby to an increase in the efficiency of primitive farming. Fires set by the aborigines of Northern and South-Eastern Australia led to the expansion of wild cycad ranges and an increase in its yield. In particular, the fire contributed to the establishment of

1 Maksimov A. N. On the eve of agriculture. - Scientific Notes of the RANION Institute of History, 1929, vol. 3, p. 217.

2 Semenov S. A. Razvitie tekhniki v kamennom vek [Development of technology in the Stone Age]. L. 1968, pp. 303-308; Kabo V. R. Tasmanians and the Tasmanian Problem. M. 1975, pp. 116-119; Stewart O. C. Fire as the First Great Force Employed by Man. In: Man's Role in Changing the Face of the Earth. Chicago. 1956; Merrilles D. Man the Destroyer: Late Quaternary Changes in the Australian Marsupial Fauna. - Journal of the Royal Society of Western Australia, 1968, vol. 51, pt. 1; Jones R. Fire-stick Farming. - Australian Natural History, 1969, vol. 16, N 7; Gоuld R. Uses and Effects of Fire among the Western Desert Aborigines of Australia. - Mankind, 1971, vol. 8, N 1; Ho r ton D. The Burning Question: Aborigines, Fire and Australian Ecosystems. -Ibid., 1982, vol. 13, N 3.

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synchronous cycle of maturation of different plants, and as a result, cycads produced a 7-fold higher yield on the burned area than on the unburned 3 . And the yield of some grains and roots on the burned site increased several dozen times. With their remarkable powers of observation, hunters and gatherers must have noticed this effect sooner or later and started using it. Indeed, in some parts of Australia, women gathered a rich crop of plant food from the burned area several years after the fire. In America, from British Columbia to Tierra del Fuego, a wide variety of populations also used fires to boost wild plant yields and attract wild mammals. In North America, this led to an increase in pasture fertility and an increase in the density of large herbivores such as deer and musk oxen. It is assumed that the expansion of the hazel area in Western Europe during the Mesolithic period may also have resulted from regular fires .4
From such a deliberate use of fire, there was only one step left to artificial crops, and it was done. In the Great Basin region of the western United States, some Shoshone groups set fire to small patches of vegetation in the winter and sowed seeds of wild quinoa and a number of other edible herbs. In the summer, this created an artificial accumulation of edible plants not far from the base camp and provided people with additional food, but this practice did not play a big role in the economy yet , 5 although artificial fires could sooner or later lead to the emergence of targeted crops. This is also evidenced by the cultivation of wild tobacco and similar plants observed in British Columbia and Northern California .6 While the Shoshone and Paiute of the Great Basin simply burned brush to allow wild tobacco to grow, in the areas noted above, some communities have moved much further along the path to agriculture. They first burned firewood, then sowed tobacco seeds in the still-warm ashes, used a spreading branch to perform primitive harrowing, and then occasionally engaged in weeding, sometimes even watering such areas if necessary, but never cultivated the soil (although there was no need for this).

Another method that was used to care for plants was found in the south-east and in some other areas of Australia, where Aborigines built artificial dams, dams and channels to control water. First of all, this was done in the interests of fishing, and with the help of some devices, the aborigines significantly increased the catch of fish. Indirectly, this practice affected the yield of edible plants, saving them from the deadly effects of drought. In some parts of Central Australia, Aboriginal people constructed primitive dams specifically to improve plant growth, with archaeological evidence linking the beginning of this practice to the pre-colonial era .7 The Owens Valley Paiutes also used the water of the Owens River tributaries to irrigate wild edible plants, for which they built dams made of rocks, branches, and clay in the spring and diverted the water to a system of artificial canals. From the plots irrigated in this way, women removed plentiful harvests. A similar practice is found in a number of other groups of the Great Basin 8 . If the person who described it is J. R. R. Tolkien. Stu-

3 Beaton J. M. Fire and Water: Aspects of Australian Aboriginal Management of Cycads. - Archaeology in Oceania (АО), 1982, vol. 17, N 1; O'Connell J. F., Latz P. K., Barnett P. Traditional and Modern Plant Use Among the Alyawara of Central Australia. - Economic Botany, 1983, vol. 37, N 1.

4 Mellars P. A. Fire Ecology, Animal Populations and Man: a Study of Some Ecological Relationships in Prehistory. - Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, 1976, vol.42.

5 Thomas D. H. Complexity among Great Basin Shoshoneans: the World's Least Affluent Hunter-gatherers? - Senri Ethnological Studies, 1981, vol. 9.

6 Harrington J. P. Tobacco among the Karuk Indians of California. - Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin, Washington, 1932, N 94; Kroeber A. L. Culture Element Distributions, N XV: Salt, Dogs, Tobacco. - University of California, Anthropological Records, 1941, vol. 6, N 1, p. 14.

7 Tin dale N. Adaptive Significance of the Panara or Grass Seed Culture of Australia. In: Stone Tools as Cultural Markers. Canberra. 1977; Lourandos H. Change or Stability? Hydraulics, Hunter-gathorers and Population in Temperate Australia. - World Archaeology, 1980, vol. 11, N 3.

8 Steward J. H. Basinplateau Aboriginal Sociopolitical Groups. - Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin, Washington, 1938, N 120, p. 53; Lawton H. W., Wil-

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If the ard hesitated to decide on its origin and allowed for the possibility of its emergence under European influence, then new archaeological and linguistic data reliably date its beginning to the pre-colonial period. Yet neither cultivated plants nor tillage were known to Paiute.

A recent study in Northern Australia shows the basis on which hunter-gatherers might have developed conscious plantings. On the Cape York Peninsula and Arnhem Land, women dug up wild yam tubers, trying not to damage their heads, which are connected with the vegetative system of reproduction. They left them in place, knowing that in the future they would grow yam tubers again. If they carelessly tore off the heads, they buried them again in the ground. The development of this practice allowed the aborigines to transplant some unpretentious yam species from the mainland to nearby islands, where people sometimes went to fish. Thus, even at the stage of appropriating farming, the range of wild yams was artificially expanded .9 The aborigines called the areas with wild yams their vegetable gardens and jealously protected them from strangers, marking them with special columns. Some of the fruits of these gardens were reserved for the meagre end of the dry season, and some were reserved for the reception of visitors from other communities.

While collecting wild berries and fruits, the aborigines brought the best of the fruits in bags to the base camp for relatives and children who remained there. The seeds from the fruit accumulated in piles of garbage and often sprouted, as a result of which fruit groves appeared on the places of abandoned parking lots on the coast. And in this case, human activity led to changes in the areas of edible plants, and people clearly understood the consequences of their actions and knew that trees would grow from the abandoned seeds in the future. If the natives found a sprouted coconut on the coast, they also planted it. In recent years, the use of this practice has led to the emergence of whole melons made from watermelons imported by Europeans near some sites.

It is interesting that the aborigines did not take care of only edible plants. In the northern regions, they planted plants on the parking lot specifically for shade; others served as signs marking the boundaries of communal areas. Damage to such plants was considered an unacceptable encroachment on other people's property. Sometimes people protected the young shoots that appeared near the parking lot from children and animals with fences. All this the aborigines did quite consciously. Returning to the long-abandoned parking lot, they often lamented: "The poor old territory has become quite wild. No one took care of her. " 10 This practice was also observed in other areas. In Queensland, Aboriginal people planted the bunya bunya tree, the fruit of which served as a food source. In South Australia, women transplanted tubers to new locations, and when harvesting, they unintentionally thinned out their dense thickets and, pulling the tubers out of the ground, unknowingly dug up the ground, which affected the boundaries of plant ranges and their density.

In Central Australia, Aboriginal activities led to both the unconscious and conscious transfer of plants to new locations. In the first case, it was a question of transferring ornaments made for magical purposes from plants, which were sooner or later thrown away or lost. In the second case, Australian Walbirds who visited their native places after a long absence would grab grains or shoots of local plants that symbolized their connection with their homeland and plant them in a new place. These plants had no nutritional value, and their transplanting should be attributed to emotional or social factors 11 . Something similar was observed in the Euro-

ke Ph. J., De Decker M., Mason W. M. Agriculture Among the Paiute of Owens Valley. - The Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology, Berkeley, 1976, vol. 3, pp. 13 - 50.

9 Harris D. R. Subsistence Strategies among Torres Strait. In: Sunda and Sahul. N. Y. 1977.

10 Jones R. The Neolithic, Paleolithic and the Hunting Gardeners - Man and Land in the Antipodes. In: Quaternary Studies, Wellington. 1975; Hynes R. A., Chase A. K-Plants, Sites and Domiculture: Aboriginal Influence upon Plant Communities in Cape York Peninsula. - AO, 1982, vol. 17, N 1.

11 Campbell A. H. Elementary Food Production by the Australian Aborigines. - Mankind, 1965, vol. 6, N 5; Irvine F. R. Evidence of Change in the Vegetable Diet of Australian Aborigines. In: Diprotodon to Detribalization. East Lansing. 1970; Gott B. Ecology of Root Use by the Aborigines of Southern Australia. -AO, 1982, vol. 17, N 1;

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Mesolithic period in relation to the willow, the artificial expansion of which some authors too hastily associate with the domestication of wild deer and other animals 12 .

The considered materials complicate the problem of the boundary between appropriating and producing farms and force us to return to the question of the origin of agriculture. But first, in order to avoid terminological confusion, we will focus on some important definitions, because representatives of different scientific disciplines show a different approach here. From the point of view of humanitarians, domestication consists primarily in changing the attitude of a person to plants and animals (caring for them, artificial control over reproduction, and other manipulations in the interests of a person) and in changing their place in culture. Productive farming is "measures by which a person promotes the growth or reproduction of fauna and flora used for food", and in its simplest form it boils down to creating favorable conditions for their natural reproduction .13 The logic of this approach represents domestication as a continuous process of quantitative changes that do not allow us to clearly outline the boundary that separates the appropriating economy from the producing one. For some authors, this serves as a reason for refusing to set such a task.: they believe that domestication is only an intensification of the process that took place in all epochs14 .

A different approach is found in biologists, for whom the main criterion of domestication is morphophysiological variability. From this point of view, cultivated plants and domestic animals should include only those species that differ from those existing in the wild in a number of important external features. However, biological criteria only record the result of a process that has already started earlier. On the one hand, it is allowed to cultivate plants that are wild in terms of morphological indicators (a picture typical of the era of the formation of agriculture); on the other hand, it is allowed to include in the number of cultivated species that were not used by humans and originated as a side effect of their activities (weeds, some types of animal parasites, etc.). Biological criteria allow the existence of cultivation and even agriculture without domestication, and domestication without cultivation 15 . However, in recent years, the approach to the problem of domestication has become more coherent after the introduction of the term "synanthropization", which means the indirect impact of human activity on wildlife and the resulting changes in it16 .

Plant cultivation may indeed have originated as early as the pre-agricultural period; but contrary to what is sometimes believed, 17 it has not yet led to the emergence of truly cultivated species. This did not happen for the reason that cultivation, as a rule, was not regular: there was no continuity and careful attitude to the genetic fund of the cultivated plants; the goal was simply to maintain the state of nature that hunters and gatherers considered natural. With rare exceptions, people tried not so much to transform nature as to preserve its former character under unfavorable conditions. This practice was short-lived and did not entail serious changes in the natural environment. Similar attitude to

Kimber R. G. Beginnings of Farming? Some Man-plant-animal Relationships in Central Australia. - Mankind, 1976, vol. 10, N 3.

12 Simmons I. G., Dimbleby G. W. The Possible Role of Jvy (Hedera helix L.) in the Mesolithic Economy of Western Europe. - Journal of Archaeological Science, 1974, vol. 1, N 3.

13 Campbell A. H. Op. cit., p. 206; Downs J. F. Domestication: an Examination of the Changing Relationships between Man and Animals. - Kroeber Anthropological Society Papers, Berkeley, 1960, vol. 22.

14 Higgs E. S., J arm an M. The Origins of Agriculture: a Reconsideration. - Antiquity, 1969, vol. 43, N 169.

15 Schwanitz F. The Origin of Cultivated Plants. Cambridge. 1966; Jarman H. N. The Origins of Wheat and Barley Cultivation. In: Papers in Economic Prehistory. Cambridge. 1972, pp. 15, 16; Bronson B. The Earliest Farming: Demography as Cause and Consequence. In: Origins of Agriculture. The Hague. 1977, pp. 26, 27.

16 Synanthropization and domestication of animals. Materials for the conference of 1969, Moscow, 1969; Bogolyubsky S. N. Domestication as a biological problem. In: Problems of domestication of animals and plants, Moscow, 1972, p. 3.

17 Novikov Yu. F. On the emergence of agriculture and its initial forms. - Soviet Archeology, 1959, N 4, p. 33.

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It is appropriate to compare plants with the domestication of animals, which was often found in the same population groups 18 . Both were distinguished by the manipulation of different biological species (and not just those that later entered the culture) and a variety of goals that went beyond utilitarian and economic ones.

The sexual division of labor is also of interest. Women and children took an active part in the domestication and early breeding of animals. The cultivation of plants among hunters, fishermen and gatherers was carried out, depending on the circumstances, by both men and women. Male walbirds transplanted plants in Central Australia, men planted tobacco in California and quinoa in the Great Basin. In many parts of Australia, women were responsible for harvesting and tending wild yams, but on Muralag Island in the Torres Strait, the "prestige plant" was planted by men; that is, the division of labor reflected the situation of hunter-gatherer societies. Gathering as a branch of the primitive economy, which provided the population with plant food, was mainly assigned to women. However, in the social sphere, the leading role belonged to men. Therefore, plants that had a special social significance (provided food for large ritual gatherings, marked the boundaries of communal territories, were used in ceremonies) were under the care of men. This is why, depending on the economic or social context, the care of different plants was carried out in different parts of the world, either by men or women. These facts make us reject the still widespread opinion in the literature that agriculture was invented necessarily by women, and cattle breeding-by men.

What place did these societies occupy in the history of mankind and how can their economy be characterized? At one time, Yu. Lipe singled them out from the general mass of the pre-agricultural population as "harvest - gathering peoples". When Lipe defined them as "tribes that forage for food by harvesting the fruits of one or more species of wild edible plants, which provided them with the main provisions throughout the year,"19 he was exaggerating, for peoples so dependent on the harvest of a few species of wild plants almost never existed. Even the population of the poorest, desert regions of the hot zone, where plant food accounted for up to 80% of the diet, led a seasonal multi-resource economy and used different sources of livelihood at different times of the year. The economy was even more diverse where the natural conditions were favorable.

In Northern Australia, protein-based foods made up 2/3 of the diet of local residents, and they do not fall under the category of vegetarians at all .20 But it was there that complex methods of caring for wild plants were noted. Such techniques should be interpreted as "sophisticated gathering" (a term used in Soviet literature). This definition seems preferable, since it successfully combines two important points: it reflects the appropriative nature of the economy and indicates the emergence of new, progressive elements that can become the basis of agriculture. Sophisticated gathering has the beginnings of the most ancient agricultural systems: burning, sowing grains in the remaining ash lead to fallow farming; artificial irrigation and watering of land areas give rise to irrigation farming; planting plants in well-fertilized soil led to the emergence of house gardens.

It is on the example of the formation of agriculture that it is clear that a qualitative leap is not always associated with a sharp break in gradualness: from the stage of complicated gathering to the addition of the agricultural way of life, the process proceeded smoothly, it is difficult to dissect it into any evolutionary links. However the difference between hosts is-

18 On the peculiarities of animal domestication among hunters, fishermen and gatherers, see: Shnirelman V. A. Origin of cattle breeding, Moscow, 1980, pp. 135-146.

19 Lips J. E. Government. In: General Anthropology. Boston. 1938, p. 502; ejusd. Die Erntevolker, eine wichtige Phase in der Entwicklung der menschlichen Wirtschaft. Brl. 1953.

20 Jones R. Hunters in the Australian Coastal Savanna. In: Human Ecology in Savanna Environment. Lnd. 1980, pp. 134 - 138.

21 Semenov S. A. Origin of agriculture, L. 1974, p. 307.

22 Andrianov B. V. Ancient irrigation systems of the Aral Sea region, Moscow, 1969, p. 457.

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The role of government systems and public organization at the beginning and end of this process is enormous. From this point of view, data on the use of cereals by the Late Paleolithic population of Upper Egypt are interesting. Not far from Aswan, on the territory of the arid western desert in the Wadi Kubbaniya region, several sites dating back to the XVI millennium BC were found.Their population was engaged in hunting, fishing, and collecting wild plants. Numerous trowels, mortars and pestles found at the sites indicate the important role of grains of these plants in nutrition. If we call it a productive economy, then its antiquity is doubled .23 But rather, it should be a typical pattern for sophisticated gathering, when people use fire or artificial irrigation to expand the range of wild edible plants. After a change in natural conditions at the turn of the Pleistocene and Holocene, the described practice, which was widespread in the Nile Valley at the end of the Late Paleolithic, then completely disappeared.

This would hardly have happened if there were real farmers in the place of the gatherers, for whom, unlike the hunters and gatherers who had a multi-resource economy, the question was life or death in crisis conditions. Here we meet with another feature of complicated gathering - its reversibility: it was not the leading type of economy, and in an unfavorable situation, people could abandon it, increasing other activities. Complicated gathering prepared the ground for the transition to agriculture. However, this transition was not made automatically 24 . It required serious socio-economic reasons.

23 Wendorf F., Schild R., Close A. E. Loaves and Fishes: the Prehistory of Wadi Kubbaniya. Dallas. 1980; Roubet C, E Hadidi N. 20000 ans d'environnement prehistorique dans la vallee du Niletle desert Egyptien. -L'Anthropologie, 1981 - 1982, t. 85, N 1, pp. 53 - 54. Recently, it was found that the grains of barley, wheat and seeds of cultivated dates found in Wadi Kubbaniya belonged to a later time (III-I millennium BC) than the main site complex (Close A. E. Current Research and Recent Radiocarbon Dates from Northern Africa, II. - Journal of African History, 1984, vol. 25, No. 1, pp. 3, 4). This does not invalidate the conclusion that intensive plant gathering is widespread in the Nile Valley, as evidenced by a wide range of data.

24 For more information, see: Shnirelman V. A. Modern concepts of the origin of the producing economy. - Sovetskaya arkheologiya, 1978, N 3; it is the same. Innovation and cultural continuity. - Peoples of Asia and Africa, 1982, N 5; ejusd. On the Paleolithic/Mesolithic Transition. - Current Anthropology, 1982, vol. 23, N2, pp. 224, 225.

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