All of Morgan Hill came last Friday evening for the grand
opening of the brand-new Safeway supermarket at the Tennant Station
shopping center. Okay
… maybe not ALL 33,556 (according to the 2000 U.S. census) of
Mushroomville’s fine citizens. But it sure seemed that way.
All of Morgan Hill came last Friday evening for the grand opening of the brand-new Safeway supermarket at the Tennant Station shopping center. Okay … maybe not ALL 33,556 (according to the 2000 U.S. census) of Mushroomville’s fine citizens. But it sure seemed that way.
Mobs of people gamboled around the store. They nibbled little sandwich samples and other goodies offered from serving trays. My overall verdict: the new Safeway is, bar none, the most splendid supermarket in the South Valley. It’s posh. It’s spacious. And it’s easy to maneuver around.
It’s a cornucopia of every nutritional resource conceivable to make life worth living.
Nibbling on a turkey sandwich sample, I prowled the newly-opened supermarket pushing a shopping cart complete with a plastic drink holder. (What’s next in cart evolution, I wondered. A CD/tape player? An anti-lock brake system?)
Bedazzled, I wandered down aisle after aisle of shelves laden with deli delicacies, bakery goodies, packaged meats, fresh and colorful produce, dairy products, and cans and boxes and bags of thousands of yummy food items. Whatever cuisine my tummy might possibly crave, I could hunt for it here.
While examining cantaloupe in the produce section, an amazing idea hit me. “Wow!” I thought, inhaling the aroma of farm-fresh vegetables neatly stacked all around. “The human species sure has come a long, LONG ways since the start of the Agricultural Revolution.”
Humanity has thoroughly mastered the art of producing and distributing food.
My imagination suddenly jumped me back 100,000 years ago to the archaeological period paleoanthropologists refer to as “the Fred Flintstone Era.” Life could get harsh in drought years when our ancestors struggled in their constant quest for food. The world’s Homo sapien population at that time was about 100,000 (the South Valley alone has more folks these days). Instead of our typical modern work week of 50 to 60 hours, early humans “worked” an average of 15 hours a week in their quest for honey, fruit, nuts, berries and tubers.
Groups who depended on the protein of wild game to survive often had to keep moving nomadically with the herds. It could be a rough and dangerous life – always on the quest for cuisine.
Some paleoanthropologists believe human speech developed to help coordinate hunters as well as pass nifty ideas to the next generation. “See that bunch of wooly mammoth, kid,” dad told junior. “Let’s chase ’em in that direction. They’ll plunge off that precipitous cliff and we’ll have a barbeque.”
(Alright, maybe they didn’t use words like “precipitous.”)
Around 10,000 BC in Mesopotamia (present day Iraq and Iran) or possibly the Crimea region of what’s now Russia, some genius noticed something kind of funny about nature. Insert wheat or barley kernels in the dirt and, after it rains, stalks shot from the soil – like magic.
“Hey, Barney,” the ancient genius suggested. “Let’s plant that field full of barley seeds so we can have a sustainable food supply.”
“You’re crazy!” his astonished neighbor exclaimed. “Do you wanna start an Agricultural Revolution or something?”
“What could go wrong?” our Neolithic hero asked with a shrug. “I’m tired of chasing wooly mammoths over precipitous cliffs … heck, I’m tired trying to get my tongue around the word ‘precipitous.’ I’m gonna make a digging stick to plant the barley.”
“How ’bout a plow instead?”
“Great idea! And maybe we’ll domesticate wild animals like cows and pigs and goats and sheep. Then we’ll have meat and milk for the winter. Yabadaba-Doo!”
So that, according to historians, is how Fred Flintstone invented farming.
Of course, the story doesn’t end there. With the Agricultural Revolution came a surplus and greater diversity of meat, milk, cheese and farm-grown fruits and vegetables. Folks no longer had to spend their time in the continuous quest for food – though rather counterintuitively, they wound up working more hours per week as farmers than as hunter gatherers, according to scientists.
Other occupations arose such as potters, bakers, brick-makers and personal fitness trainers. Religion grew formalized because society needed priests to make sacrifices to appease whatever mysterious invisible entity made the crops grow. And cities arose as the population swelled.
Seems people just weren’t dying off from starvation as much they use to.
The rise of civilization meant you now needed political leaders to give everybody rules to keep society stable. Political leaders meant taxes had to be collected to pay for things like defense and civic buildings and mansions for political leaders.
And taxes meant you had to have certified public accountants. Also with taxes came the invention of written language to fill in complicated 1040 forms.
Writing – the permanent record of information – set off a whole new revolution of its own. This one eventually gave us the printing press and Internet Web pages.
Today, instead of chasing animal herds all over the plains of Asia or the savannahs of East Africa, we South Valley residents simply drive to our nearest Safeway or Albertson’s or Nob Hill supermarkets. We stroll down store aisles gathering groceries and leisurely sipping Starbucks lattes from cart beverage holders.
We don’t even need to go to the supermarket. We can now go on-line to order up our wooly mammoth steaks, delivered right to our homes. Nuke it and you’ve got a meal in minutes.
I, however, enjoy going to the supermarket. It’s as close as modern me can get to the ancient urge to hunt for nutritional resources. Okay, maybe picking up a package of Oscar Meyer hot dogs (fat free!) from a refrigerated deli shelf won’t exactly mean life or death for my tribe. But there’s a Neolithic in every red-blooded American guy eager to bring the meat back to the cave.
At last week’s supermarket grand opening, I placed my canteloupe on the check-stand conveyor belt and took out my ATM card. “It’s way too easy getting food now a days,” I told Debbie, the Safeway check-out lady, as I slid the plastic through the machine.
She gave me a puzzled look.
I grinned mischevously. “Damn that Agricultural Revolution!” I exclaimed.
