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Chapter10.pdf
EARLY AGRICULTURE AND THE NEOLITHIC REVOLUTION: MODIFYING THE ENVIRONMENT
TO SATISFY HUMAN DEMANDS Chapter 10
Cultivation involves the intentional preparation of fields, planting, harvesting, and storing of seeds, that results in significant changes in technology and subsistence, but does not result in morphological and genetic changes in the plants.
Domestication, intentional or unintentional, results in the change to the genotype and physical characteristics of plants. Domesticates, or the new species that are created from existing or wild populations, are then dependant on humans for their survival.
Agriculture involves a commitment to a relationship with plants that results in changes in social structure and organization, extensive clearing of fields and forests, and the invention and adoption of new techniques and technologies. Agriculture is defined as a diet that is primarily reliant upon (approximately 75 %) domesticated species of plants and animals.
Gardens in Papua New Guinea mostly growing sweet potatoes, which originated in South America
How could these large populations cultivate a crop that did not originate there?
When and how did the changes enabled by sweet potato cultivation happen?
Horticulture in New Guinea (Photos: ©
Jack Golson; inset: © Adrian Arbib/CORBIS)
HOW HEAVILY DID PREHISTORIC PEOPLE DEPEND ON HUNTING?
Anatomically modern humans ate only what they
could hunt, gather, or scavenge
Anthropologists have studied living hunter-
gatherers to find clues about foraging practices
in the past For 99% of human history Hunter/Gatherers were tied to
seasonally abundant plant food resources, movement of game,
and the ebb and flow of aquatic resources
THE HUNTER-GATHERER LIFEWAY
Environment and climate in regions inhabited by hunter-gatherers were unsuitable for agriculture and animal husbandry
Europeans depicted these regions as harsh and inhabitants’ technologies as simple
They assumed the foraging way of life was crude and brutish → the basis for deeply held cultural stereotypes
THE “MAN THE HUNTER” CONFERENCE
Anthropologists gathered to assess:
How difficult was it for early hunter-gatherers to get their food?
How similar were contemporary hunter-gatherers to their prehistoric ancestors?
Dominant anthropological model of hunter-gatherers societies before the conference: they live in patrilocal bands. The assumptions about hunter gatherers:
Hunting was principally undertaken by men
Hunting was more important than gathering
Men’s subsistence activities were more significant than women’s
Conference result: a resounding rejection of the old male-dominated model
GENERALIZED FORAGING MODEL
The generalized foraging model: hunter-gatherer societies have five basic characteristics:
Egalitarianism
Low population density
Lack of territoriality
A minimum of food storage
Flux in band composition
“ORIGINAL AFFLUENT SOCIETY”
Hunter-gatherer lives were not harsh:
They spent hours each day in leisure, socializing, or sleeping
They neither needed nor desired material goods
Did not view their natural environments as scarce and harsh, but as affluent and always providing for their needs
Hence they were called “the original affluent society”
The Amazon Uncontacted
Frontier, a large area on
the Peru-Brazil border that
is home to the highest
concentration of
uncontacted tribes in the
world.
THE IMPORTANCE OF WOMEN
More recent research finds considerable variation among hunter-gatherer group
Women spend as much time working as men do
Recent analyses suggest that in most horticultural and agricultural societies, women’s effort is typically greater than that of men.
THE PROBLEM OF SURPLUSES
Why did they not spend an extra hour each day to amass a surplus?
Two proposed answers to this question:
Lorna Marshall: sharing obligations
Example: !Kung women only gathered as much as they needed for their own families; a surplus meant they would be expected to share it with the entire band. If her labor would not help her family, collecting too much was intentionally avoided. Among many hunter-gatherer communities, people place great emphasis on sharing as a moral obligation.
Bruce Winterhalder: threat of depletion of local resources
THE EXCEPTIONS
Not all hunter-gatherer societies avoided accumulating surpluses
Pacific Northwest Indian communities amassed large surpluses
Used to assert superiority at potlatches
The goal of these gift exchanges was not to provide food or material goods to other groups, but to assert political, economic, and social superiority by giving away more than the recipients could pay back at some later potlatch.
Nineteenth-Century Kwakiutl Potlatch
(Photo: © PVDE/Bridgeman Images)
PAST VERSUS PRESENT
Do contemporary hunter-gatherers represent the lifestyles of Paleolithic ancestors?
The two groups are not identical
Contemporaries are linked to sedentary agricultural and industrial societies through trade and other social ties, which did not exist prior to the development of agriculture
Some contemporary groups do have features that are important for understanding the past
First: hunting may make up 10%-100% of diet
Second: anthropological models now see them principally as egalitarian foragers, relying primarily on plant foods, with women’s roles equal in importance to men’s
What led people to shift from a foraging lifestyle in the first place?
WHY DID PEOPLE START DOMESTICATING PLANTS AND ANIMALS?
In the past 10,000 years, ancient societies developed more or less independently in the Middle East, China, India, Meso-America, and South America
Hunter-gatherers didn’t suddenly “discover” how to plant seeds, nor did they abruptly learn that by feeding certain wild animals they could control their behavior. Instead, knowledge of plants and animals long preceded systematic cultivation and domestication
Agriculture was developed independently
in several regions of the world at different
periods during the Holocene. From these
“core areas,” the productive new economy
spread eventually to adjacent regions,
allowing the development of more
populous societies and leading ultimately
to the demise of hunting and gathering in
most areas of the world.
WHY AGRICULTURE?
The origins of agriculture is a complex topic that evolves both empirical (archaeological) and theoretical components
1. The “Oasis Hypothesie” by V. Gordon Childe
• The drying of the climate at the end of the Pleistocene in the Near East created conditions that led to
early domestication. Both humans and animals and plants would have gathered around the few
oases or water resources, and humans would have gradually come to control many of these species
2. The “Hilly Flanks Hypothesis” by Robert J. Braidwood
• Plant and animal species would be domesticated in areas where they first existed in the wild as part
of gradually increasing association with humans
3. Demographic Theories
• Increasing human populations require more food than could be obtained in the wild, which resulted in
intensification of production and eventual domestication of plants and animals
4. Co-Evolutionary Hypothesis
• Humans were adapting to plants and animals as much as plants and animals were adapting to
humans
None of these theories provides an adequate explanation for the origins of agriculture in every region!
REASONS FOR THE CHANGE
V. Gordon Childe: this shift had significant consequences for developing more sophisticated technologies, larger populations, and more complex forms of social organization
V. Gordon Childe (Photo: AP Photo)
THE “FERTILE CRESCENT”
“Hilly flanks” hypothesis:
Most plants first cultivated were indigenous to upland fringes
Once they had been domesticated in the uplands, they spread to groups in the lowlands.
First evidence of early humans actively and
intentionally planting seeds for their own food
comes from excavations in the Middle East
POPULATION GROWTH AND FOOD PRODUCTION
Thomas Malthus: population growth depended on the food supply
Esther Boserup: population growth forced people to work harder to produce more food
Population growth had triggered technological improvements and increased labor inputs throughout recorded history
UNDERSTANDING + POPULATION GROWTH = MANAGEMENT OF FOOD RESOURCES
If hunter-gatherers already understood how plants grew, even a small increase in population could have encouraged them to manage their own food resources
If incipient food production supported the existing population plus a small amount of further growth, population pressure would encourage further food production
To expand this theory some argued that after the last ice age, environmental conditions improved, allowing a small but gradual population increase. Others argue post-glacial populations increased in coastal areas that had favorable wild resources for fisher-foraging groups
BEYOND POPULATION PRESSURES: THREE THEORIES
1.Independent emergence suggests driver was environmental (end of ice age)
• If food production began in diverse parts of the world almost simultaneously, then it likely had to do in part with the more habitable environment following the last ice age
2.Changes in cognitive ability allowed for perception of longer term advantages of regular food production
Social processes were key to the beginning of food production due to changes in cognitive ability that allowed them to perceive some longer term advantages that came with regular food production
3.People and the plants they cultivated began to co-evolve, shaping each other
Irrespective of why people in one region or another began cultivating plants, the people and the plants they cultivated began to co-evolve, shaping each other
HOW DID EARLY HUMANS RAISE THEIR OWN FOOD?
Hunter-gatherers have an extraordinary knowledge of their natural environment
Planting wild grains from locally occurring grasses led to larger plant and seed sizes
Tending and planting wild grass seeds meant selecting the best seeds, improving subsequent planting stock
Examples of domesticated corn from the Tehuacán valley of Mexico
showing how domestication gradually produced larger and larger
cobs. (Photo: © Robert S. Peabody Museum of Archaeology, Phillips
Academy, Andover, Massachusetts. All Rights Reserved)
MORE THAN JUST WHEAT AND CORN
Humans also domesticated non-food plants
Fiber-bearing plants for basket-making
Similar processes with domesticated animals
Humans may have begun manipulating food sources in subtler ways
Arboriculture occurred much earlier than domestication of other crops in Southeast Asia
MAJOR AREAS OF DOMESTICATION
IMPACT OF RAISING PLANTS AND ANIMALS ON OTHER ASPECTS OF LIFE
Likely that first efforts to raise food changed people relatively little
Groups ranged across large territories, planting and harvesting during annual movement
Herding may have brought a greater change
As the number of livestock animals increased, their needs may have led some food producers to turn to transhumance
TRANSHUMANCE
A fairly simple transformation of the nomadic lifestyle of hunter-gatherers
This led to societies that practice pastoralism.
Transhumance among
the Bachtiari of Iran.
(Photo: AP Photo/Ben
Curtis)
PASTORALISM
Pastoralism tends to lead to larger populations and more complex patterns of social interaction.
Pastoralists are relatively few in number worldwide
Most people in the world are settled, living from agriculture, either directly or indirectly
SEDENTISM
Combination of population growth and sedentism led to the most significant changes that accompany food production
Once settled, populations grew, with greater intensification of food production
More labor for food production resulted in periodic shortages of food, which in turn led to true agriculture
THE END RESULT
Neolithic Revolution was many events in many parts of the world at different times
Cultivation and animal husbandry typically led to sedentism and food surpluses
Growing population pressures together with surpluses led to radical new interactions
This led to the rise of cities and states and introduction of social hierarchies
