In regards to the bucket metaphor: the ‘width’ is the amount of fertile land available to its inhabitants.
Water only starts ‘stacking’, going ‘up’, if it can’t go ‘down’ or ‘to the sides’ anymore. The walls of a bucket prevent sidewards expansion and force the water level to go up.
Like water, pre-industrial humans had good reasons to avoid ‘stacking’ as well. Population density forces farmers (which is 90%+ of the population in pre-industrial times) to adopt more labor-intensive practices. So when humans had the chance, they preferred to spread out.
When hunter-gatherers cannot find enough food anymore, and all surrounding lands are exhausted by other hunter-gatherers, ‘spreading out’ ceases to be a viable method. ‘HumanWater’ has spread as far as it can, and now it will start to ‘stack’: hunter-gatherers will adopt slash-and-burn agriculture, raising the potential population density. When slash-and-burn agriculture has spread through the entire ‘bucket’ (all reachable fertile ground), the next agricultural step is implemented. The easiest one: they don’t go from slash-and-burn agriculture to plowing, irrigating, weeding and spreading manure in one generation. It happens step by step, starting with the least labor intensive ‘upgrade’ and only escalating when forced to.
Thanks!
In regards to the bucket metaphor: the ‘width’ is the amount of fertile land available to its inhabitants.
Water only starts ‘stacking’, going ‘up’, if it can’t go ‘down’ or ‘to the sides’ anymore. The walls of a bucket prevent sidewards expansion and force the water level to go up.
Like water, pre-industrial humans had good reasons to avoid ‘stacking’ as well. Population density forces farmers (which is 90%+ of the population in pre-industrial times) to adopt more labor-intensive practices. So when humans had the chance, they preferred to spread out.
When hunter-gatherers cannot find enough food anymore, and all surrounding lands are exhausted by other hunter-gatherers, ‘spreading out’ ceases to be a viable method. ‘HumanWater’ has spread as far as it can, and now it will start to ‘stack’: hunter-gatherers will adopt slash-and-burn agriculture, raising the potential population density. When slash-and-burn agriculture has spread through the entire ‘bucket’ (all reachable fertile ground), the next agricultural step is implemented. The easiest one: they don’t go from slash-and-burn agriculture to plowing, irrigating, weeding and spreading manure in one generation. It happens step by step, starting with the least labor intensive ‘upgrade’ and only escalating when forced to.
I hadn’t really considering overflowing buckets, but for example, the Greek colonisation might be a good example of that happening:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_colonisation
I love the blog you linked! Funny to see the screengrabs from Game of Thrones, that exact problem bothered me as well :)