Settling down

Nowhere outside the Hilly Flanks did people have so much to defend. Even in 7000 BCE, almost everyone outside this region was a forager, shifting seasonally, and even when they had begun to settle down in villages, such as Mehrgarh in modern Pakistan or Shanghan in the Yangzi Delta, these were simple places by the standards of Jericho. If hunter-gatherers from any other place on earth had been airlifted to Cayonu or Catalhoyik they would not, I suspect have known what hit them. Gone would be their caves or little clusters of huts, replaced by bustling towns with sturdy houses, great stores of food, powerful art, and religious monuments. They would find themselves working hard, dying young, and hosting an unpleasant array of microbes. They would rub shoulders with rich and poor, and chafe under rejoice in men's authority over women and parents' over children. They might even discover that some people had the riht to murder them in rituals. And they might well wonder why people had inflicted all this on themselves.

From Ian Morris' Why The West Rules- For Now.