Mixed Harvest: Stories from the Human Past

by Rob Swigart

After millennia of wandering the earth with little impact, a universal, if inadvertent transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture and pastoralism was complete within a period of a few thousand years. Mixed Harvest tells the story of the Sedentary Divide, the most significant event since modern humans emerged. Before the Sedentary Divide, humans followed their food; afterward, everything the human diet had abandoned wild foods by domesticating, and irrevocably changing, plants and animals, staying in one place and keeping them close. Agriculture was so successful that religious and social belief systems evolved to enforce social inequality, exploitation of resources, constrained gender relations, and increasingly devastating conflict.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Short Stories

244 pages, Paperback

Published December 1, 2019

About the author

Two recent books:

Mixed Harvest: Stories from the Human Past came out in late 2019. In unforgettable stories of the human journey, a combination of compelling storytelling and well-researched archaeology underscore an excavation into the deep past of human development and its consequences. Through a first encounter between a Neanderthal woman and the Modern Human to the emergence and destruction of the world’s first cities, Mixed Harvest tells the tale of the Neolithic Revolution, also called the (First) Agricultural Revolution, the most significant event since modern humans emerged. Rob Swigart’s latest work humanizes the rapid transition to agriculture and pastoralism with a grounding in the archaeological record.

Just out: Python, third in the Lisa Emmer series:

by Rob Swigart (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
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EVERYONE WANTS A PIECE OF HIM…HE HAS A MILLION
VIDEO FOLLOWERS AND HE’S ONLY SIX YEARS OLD—
To his mom, he’s just sweet Félix, a very special six-year-old. She doesn’t understand him, but she loves him to bits.

To his million young video followers, he’s their beloved science teacher.

To the little-known Delphi Agenda, working, as always, for peace and harmony, he’s not only a prodigy, he’s a prophet with the potential to become more powerful even than Lisa Emmer, the current Delphic Oracle. Perhaps even the power to save the world from humanity’s dumpster fire.

But to a few others who understand how enormous his powers are, he’s a pawn they could put to their own use.

So everyone wants a piece of him. Kidnapping is not off the table.

In fact, it’s pretty likely. He and Lisa, his mentor, can see that coming a mile away.
A crooked Cardinal has his own ideas and Python, a pharmaceutical company run by a pair of sketchy twins, needs him for their own “world-changing” project. Then there’s the fanatical cult that first predicted his birth. They want him back.

The Delphi Agenda’s job is to keep him safe. But does he really need them? Half the fun's watching his innocent brilliance effortlessly deflate the kind of twisted, power-hungry villains that threaten the Agenda and its ideals.

Fans of intrepid women sleuths will love Lisa Emmer, as well as anyone smitten with the romance of the ancient world, action-adventure in historical fiction, and thriller conspiracies.

But this thoroughly modern tale of historical sleuthing has a little something for everybody: a high-tech invention that dances on the edges of sci-fi, excursions to various historical locales in Europe to delight armchair travelers, and a literary trail of crumbs to charm puzzle lovers.

In addition, author Swigart offers a wonderfully hopeful worldview that will intrigue not only mystery readers, but devotees of Merlin Sheldrake, Michael Pollan, and the world of fantastic fungi.

Reviews

[Selkis]

Mixed Harvest: Stories from the Human Past by Rob Swigart is a lovely book, which explores the transition of humankind from being hunter-gatherers to agricultural societies. It’s hard to place it in a genre: is it non–fiction? Historical fiction? Historical non-fiction?

It is a short story collection with stories that tell how human beings slowly evolved, changed and learned about their world. Every story adds new elements to the overarching theme, from religion to art, tribes to city-states.

I enjoyed the archaeological facts that start and end every chapter as well as the charming stories. I can definitely recommend Mixed Harvest to anybody interested in prehistory and human development.

Thanks to Netgalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
You can find all my reviews on my blog: https://bookandlanguageaddict.com/

[Jack Rochester]

A Triumph of Storytelling!

In Mixed Harvest, Rob Swigart has written a most remarkable and imaginative short story collection. It is remarkable for its enthralling, in-depth portrayal of the lives of humans from their emergence as distinct beings. It is imaginative for its breadth in depicting the development of personal and social consciousness from their most primitive origins to the beginnings of how we perceive ourselves and our society today. Each of these stories is told, not only with an acute sense of informed historicity and scientific accuracy, but with engaging writing. Reading these stories was not only an evocative intellectual experience but a heartfelt emotional one as well. It is the work of a master storyteller. Swigart brings the stories so alive one feels a part of them—as if you, I, we, truly are.

The subtitle of Mixed Harvest is “Stories from the Human Past,” and they are fascinating stories. I found myself so engrossed that I had to ration myself to reading just one a day to savor and appreciate Swigart’s storytelling. We know many of these stories from the evidence of facts from various sources, but here they have been tethered together into a captivating narrative.

There is a distinct sense of irony in the author's choice of title for his unique collection of linked short-stories. They tell the story of human evolution, told from the philosophical perspective of Hamlet's oft-quoted "What a piece of work is man." What a piece of work is right.

Mixed Harvest is set up in three sections: Shelter, House, and Home (a la Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs). Each of the short chapters—standalone narratives, to be more precise—details a time and place in human “civilization,” although evolution is probably a more accurate term. Swigart frames each with a brief introduction, then a contextual, factual explanation and expansion at the conclusion that goes further in illuminating the story.

In some instances one story leads to another, but one soon realizes the “ascent of man” (if ascent is what we are to conclude) is greater than the sum of its characters. There is anthropology, archaeology, religion, myth, evolution—in short, all the forces of human development—present, but in the background of the more interesting and compelling stories of people and their lives. It soon becomes clear that our predecessors were as driven by fears as we are today.

And it is this focus, on stories of people, which really sets Swigart’s work apart and above other depictions of early human activity. The characters come alive as people, as real as if they were alive today. As uncivilized or as uncultured as they are, they have thoughts and feelings: Bringer, a Neanderthal woman, takes in the Traveler and in so doing saves his life and helps enrich her own; burying the dead under the family hut to keep their spirit nearby; grandmothers caring for children so the mother can find food; all human-faced rituals that still exist today.

It’s all well and good to go to an art exhibit of, say, Mesopotamian artifacts, but what we see are objects. Mixed Harvest allows us into daily human life, whether it’s in the growing awareness of how a woman is impregnated, the utility of sharp objects, writing (“the technology for storing and retrieving information”), the emergence of human consciousness in understanding nature’s changes, and the compelling need for Maslow’s five needs—food, shelter, etc.— that eventually drove peoples to violence and warfare. Swigart writes, “Of all of mankind’s enemies, mankind took first place.”

One of the book’s more fascinating subjects for me is immortality, which Swigart describes in the personage of Nin-Shar, Inanna, Enheduanna, the early human goddesses who, of course, were only thought to be immortal (which also points out how, even from the earliest times, women were most often worshipped and revered by men (often guised in their adoration as priests), perhaps having to do with fecundity and their spiritual qualities. Even as men still grovel at overt female sensuality and sexuality, we understand they are beheld as the highest and most sought-after treasure.) There is no evidence of immortal human beings, which may be why we ascribe that condition to the gods we worship, but there is certainly proof that it’s been on the minds of humans since the earliest days of our existence. It could be explained away as the desire for life and, by extension, for living as long as (humanly) possible. Certainly, Chinese culture in particular values longevity as one of their peoples’ highest achievements, or at least the ultimate goal to strive for. Early people grasped that life is short—or at least too short, for it was shorter by at least half what it is today. Swigart ironically comments that the god Enki bestowed on us “the attributes . . . of disease, terror, old age, and death.”

Through storytelling, the author demonstrates how selfishly and ruthlessly mankind takes its needs—and in later evolution its wants—from the earth without regard for consequences. People create larger and larger communities—the ancient city of Ur (pictured above) grew to 60,000—and then, to protect itself, had to wall itself in to repel invaders greedy for its resources. That in contrast to the earlier people who welcomed strangers into their camps or caves to learn more about the world outside their narrowly circumscribed environs.

If this so-called evolution is to be properly understood, it’s not in the context of mankind improving itself in relation to the world at large. The advances of civilization, in particular technology, have not created in us a better humanity. It could be said that most of the advances in farming, industry and technology were designed to make humans lazier, although we prefer to say it's to make us more productive. We are too self-absorbed for such honesty as this, even as we eat ever more sugar and carbohydrates when we ought to be eating less, continuing to start wars upon wars, and bringing the ruination of the earth and its delicate environment with carbon emissions. As Rob Swigart says in the last sentence of this magnificent and often extraordinary sequence of stories, “Though we will certainly make new mistakes, we should, at least, avoid old ones.”

[Stephanie]

Not much is known about the first humans on the Earth.  What we do know is what we can extract from burial sites, artwork, dwellings, and artifacts that have been left behind. These artefacts combined with geologic and climatic knowledge begin to paint a picture of what life was like for the people of the Paleolithic and Neolithic eras.  Mixed Harvest is a collection of short stories of the people from these eras. Moving forward through time from the Paleolithic to the formation of cities, the author combines knowledge of what we have found from our past and storytelling to bring these people to life.  Each fictionalized story is prefaced and followed up by archeological evidence that led to the story. 

The stories in Mixed Harvest tell of love, conflict, religion, growing up, birth and death;  all things that we are familiar with.  The people in the stories were dealing with all of this in a rapidly changing world, not too different from the one we are living in today.  There is knowledge to be gained from their past mistakes and past triumphs.  The writing evokes a familiarity without breaking what we know of human communication at the time.  Feelings are conveyed without speech, using broad concepts to show emotion without words.  Mixed Harvest is an insightful and unique style of storytelling that helps connect us to our past. 

This book was received for free in return for an honest review. 

[Laurie]

A uniquely organized book on the evolution of the human journey from the time of pre-history through the appearance and dominance of the Modern Human. A very fascinating chapter plan in which the introduction to each vignette is factual, the middle content is a factionalized version of what might have transpired during the era being described, with a final summation of factual documentation of the era under scrutiny. A very thought-provoking and Illuminating text, which most readers would find hard to put down. The brevity of each chapter also is conducive in appeal to a wide range of readers.

[Books Forward]

This collection of stories really dives into the changes that have made us who we are as a people today. For those who struggle to engage with history, this book will make stories from the past come to life. It's a great way to introduce historical moments like the move to agriculture in a creative way. Thoroughly researched and thoroughly entertaining.

[Laurence Michalak]

This is a kind of archaeology meets short story book. The author is a novelist and university English teacher who had the opportunity to visit important archaeological sites in Anatolia, the Levant and Europe. Based on this, he produced a series of imaginative vignettes about what life might have been like at different intervals from prehistory to Mesopotamian civilization. For the period before writing was invented, this requires the writer to make educated guesses based on the often scanty material remains of old societies. The different chapters have short explanatory introductions. I liked it. I recommended the book to an archaeologist friend who found the book unsatisfying, because he thinks that creating stories based on so little data is such a reach. He said he also would have liked longer explanations of weaving, pottery firing, metalwork, etc. It’s certainly true, for example, that cave paintings are open to all sorts of speculative and untestable interpretations. However, since I know little about archaeology, I was easier to please. I found the genre unique, and enjoyed the interplay of fact and fiction.

[Patsye]

This is a very unusual book, and I found it very interesting. The author has written the history of man and illuminated it with stories depicting humans at various times in history. It proceeds chronologically from the Paleolithic, the Old Stone Age, through the Neolithic, the New Stone Age, into the the age of the city and relatively modern times. It is a narrative of the changes in ways of living, the development of civilization in settlements and cities, and the relationship of religion to this. He uses the named characters and stories about their lives to help us understand the progression. It is very well researched and documented, and I think it owes its readability to the fact that it was written by someone who was first a writer, and then developed his interest in archaeology. If you have any interest in anthropology, archaeology, and the history of mankind, I think you will enjoy this book.

Thanks to Netgalley and Berghahn Books for an ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.

[Lis]

Rob Swigart is a journalist and technical writer, who wrote this book, with a deep search into human development through history. This is a beautiful and intellectual story collection, each story remakes interesting aspects of humanity and how they acquired a deep understanding of the world.
The research work that the author did to recognize how they lived and their way of acting in those millennial times are remarkable through the stories, the most interesting thing is that as he tells in the stories he captures my imagination as if I had lived during that time.
Swigart's work is so impeccable, that it manages to bring its characters to life as if they were real as if they were in life because he shows them deeply from their feelings and thoughts, that's why I am giving 5 stars to this book.

[Bri]

The author has taken archeological evidence, and created small vignettes to portray what might have happened during day-to-day life, as people developed through the eons. How peoples went from merely surviving, to creating communities, language, social, business, religions, and political entities, that eventually led to large, organized civilizations. I have always been attracted to both archeology and anthropology. There are certain themes that are constants throughout the stories that still are primary concerns today. I found it an interesting read. I recommend reading it a story at a time and thinking about each one. This book highlights that although man has dominated the world, that doesn't mean that will always be the case. Is it possible to learn from our mistakes and preserve both the earth and humanity?

[Dirk]

This book is about the transition of human life from Mesolithic hunter gatherers to the first cities. The title suggests that our shift from gathering to agriculture was in some ways valuable and in some ways detrimental. It's a hybrid book, consisting of expositions of history interspersed with short stories that show how history worked out in the lives of real people. Swigart as a skilled writer who has mastered fiction in several genres and has a thorough knowledge of archaeology. The historical expositions are model of lucid writing for the educated layperson, clear forceful, illuminating. The stories are a mixed bag. Some are moving; this book is after all about good and bad consequences, the material of short stories. Others seem dry and mechanical, filling in their place where necessary like the dioramas in the museum.

[Patty]

I skipped reading the preface as I wasn't sure there were any spoilers included, but that was a mistake!

The first few pages were very difficult to read and get into, so I went back and read the Preface, which helped me understand the stories a little better from then on....

I loved reading about the transition and progress from a "shelter" to a "house" to a "home" and all the different decisions that went into it, using short stories.

As it truly states in the book, ""Mixed Harvest" is a plea to pay attention to the past in order to prepare for the future!"

#MixedHarvest #NetGalley

[Brenda]

This book of short stories uses the knowledge of what we know of early humans and dramatizes their interactions with each other and with their environment. It's a fictional account of the progression of humankind through time starting with small, non-family groups, and moving forward to the development of city-states and empires.

I really enjoyed this book because I studied human evolution in university and had a good base of knowledge to start with.

I received a free copy courtesy of Books Forward and Berghahn books in exchange for an honest review.

[Denice Langley]

MIXED HARVEST takes current discoveries of archeological significance and builds a fictional story around the history that brought the item to this point in time. It's a small taste of some fascinating tales that bring history to life for so many that find it boring. Yes, the stories are fiction but they have one foot in the scientific facts while the other foot lets us glimpse how things might have been.

[BigGirl BigBooks]

This is a masterpiece of History. The Sedentary Divide id the center of this almost textbook like account of how humans stopped chasing their food and sat down to a life of agriculture at their finger tips. Swigart lets his journalistic talent shine through thousands of years of how we developed into a cultivating species. A transition that still influences everything from the price of food to gender roles.

[Sarah Anderson-Pagal]

I love history. I love ancient history. I also love historical fiction. This book put both of these together.

We start at the first humans and end at the beginning of modern civilization.

I like that each chapter begins and ends with a historical blurb on the characters ( who actually lived) and the city/place and timeframe.

This book was well written and well thought out. I thoroughly enjoyed it!

[Jonesy.Reads]

I was so looking forward to reading this, but due to technical issues I couldn't read the ARC I was supplied with. I have unfortunately been unable to find a copy elsewhere. Mixed Harvest explores humans transition from hunter- gatherers to agricultural societies. How did this change bring about the vast inequality that we have today? I hope that I will still come across a copy of this some day, and will update my review at that time.

[Ivy]

This collection of short stories exploring our collective past is a thought-provoking perspective on our futures. It's been a long process for humanity to develop, and finding commonality with our ancestors (fictional though these specific characters are) helps demonstrate what we've learned and what we've forgotten.

Language: None
Violence: Mild
Sex: Mild
Drugs: Mild

[Brandy]

Thank you to Netgalley for allowing me the opportunity to review this book.

I enjoyed reading the stories and the progression of human development. It brought the past alive through informational yet emotionally intelligent storytelling combined with its non fiction explanation.

[Raymond]

I received a copy of this book from Netgalley in return for a fair and honest review.

I liked that each chapter began and ended with historical information on the characters and the era they lived in. I like these types of books; they are a fantastic way to teach history by putting it in a form people can relate to.