The middle of the twentieth century was the era of V. Gordon Childe and his application of the "stair-step" model of human history. Childe believed that the history followed a pattern of progress. Each step up marked a new revolution, and the plateau in the step mirrored a plateau in human progress. His ideas were widely accepted and the only problems seemed to lie in the small details. However, new research conducted as early as the 1960's, has indicated that human progress may not have been made in a positive manner, and in fact, the revolutionary transformations may have been formed in a downwards staircase instead. .
On a very direct level, it is easy for people in the present-day to say that society has benefitted from the social revolutions, for they have brought about new innovations, such as weapons, monumental architecture, and government. However, had the population never socially evolved, there would have been no use for such advances. "Ignorance is bliss," as the saying goes. The basic human necessities of food, leisure, and procreation were met in the first human civilization, known as the "Human Revolution" (Thornton, 1). .
The first humans of the world were the foragers, otherwise known as hunters and gatherers. They spent their days rather leisurely, and there was an adequate food supply to provide for their relatively small families. Population was stable because each family raised approximately two children to replace the parents when they died. The families also displayed characteristics of love: archaeologists have found ancient skeletons that have reached the age of senescence (approximately 65 years old), which means people cared for their elderly family members in order to preserve knowledge.
The transformation into an agricultural society (the Neolithic Revolution) provided little advantages over foraging. Recent research has led archaeologists to believe that this shift in society was due to climactic changes, as well as diffusion: "Thus, farming has conquered foraging through demographic growth rather than by demonstrating a more efficient life" (Thornton, 9).
