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It does not look like the article you linked to mentions that, but the easiest thing to steal is livestock. Cattle and horses move on their own feet, you don't need to carry them. A few raiders can come back from a raid with a few thousands pounds worth of meat, and very little effort. Getting the same amount of calories in grains is many times more difficult and riskier.



Excellent point. I'm not sure which came first, intensive animal husbandry or grain-based agriculture. Maybe livestock was the basis for the state.


I think storable food predates agriculture. Nuts keep quite well for very extended periods of time. Smoking and drying fish appears to also have been known for many thousands of years.

The problem with raiding before the domestication of the horse is that it's a lot of risk for not a lot of reward. How much can you carry on your back? Maybe you can carry more on some sort of wheel-barrow, but the wheel was invented after the domestication of the horse (for quite obvious reasons).

Still, while the horse is thought to have been domesticated around 3500 BC, there were fortified settlements before 4000 BC, a sign that raiding or even warfare was common. Sheep and goats were domesticated already at the time, and cheese was known. Maybe raiders were trying to steal cheese? Otherwise, there were luxury items, or status items, like polished maces, glazed and painted pottery, adornments made of animal teeth, and early artifacts made from copper. But I'm not sure it ever made sense to risk your life and raid a village just to run away with a bag of wheat.




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