I'm not actually disputing what AQ says, more trying to work out what the implications of it are. The question of what had changed, if not agriculture, really intrigues me. What was it that made monuments necessary <i>then</i>? Perhaps the implication is that before agriculture becomes possible a certain mentality, a certain degree of separation from nature, has to be attained. And conversely, that the practicalities of agriculture become obvious once this state of mind has been reached. I've always been uncomfortable with the idea that hunter gatherers were "too stupid" to work out the mechanics of growing crops/keeping animals. What AQ is saying here points the way to an alternative hypothesis - that agriculture came about as the result of a new kind of consciousness dawning. Why then?, though, is what perplexes me. The idea of the Jungian group mind seems necessary to explain it. Not that I have trouble accepting that - watch any swarm of bees, or those huge clouds of birds circling, circling, at the end of the summer, and its obvious that consciousness can be collective.