So while it’s tempting to hold Amazonia up as a ‘New World’ alternative to the ‘Old World Neolithic’, the truth is that Holocene developments in both hemispheres are starting to look increasingly similar, at least in terms of the overall pace of change. And in both cases, they look increasingly un-revolutionary. In the beginning, many of the world’s farming societies were Amazonian in spirit. They hovered at the threshold of agriculture while remaining wedded to the cultural values of hunting and foraging. The ‘smiling fields’ of Rousseau’s Discourse still lay far off in the future.
