ANTH151 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Consolidated Laws Of New York, Osteoarthritis, Columbian Exchange
1 Jun 2018
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ANTH151 – Food domestication and urbanization
The Neolithic Revolution: growing our own food
• Neolithic → ‘New Stone Age’
o Sedentary life, agriculture, irrigation, intensive work on the land
• Oldest evidence of agriculture is approximate 14,000 BP (before present) –
barley cultivation in the highlands of Mesopotamia (now in Iraq)
• Upper Nile has mortar and pestles dating to 15,000 BP, but later abandoned;
some evidence for changes in wild grains and legumes about 17,000 BP. Some
possible evidence of agriculture in Vietnam in 14,000 BP
• Transition is not abrupt or complete: people engaged in limited agricultural
activities while still gathering wild foods and hunting to supplement diet
• Agriculture not more efficient (labour to productivity) than hunting
• Once agriculture took hold, the increasing population meant that it was
impossible to return to hunting and foraging
The nature of agriculture:
• Three ways to think about domestication –
o Humans dominate plants and other animals, using foresight,
intelligence and conscious intent
o Animals and plants benefit in reproductive range and survival from
finding human niche (some anthropologists even see humans as
manipulated in relationship)
o Human-domesticate link like other co-dependent species (like ants and
aphids) – affect each other’s survival
o First domesticates? – dogs, bottle gourcs (used to carry water) and figs
(uneased relationship with us)
What does it mean to domesticate a plant?
• Some theories, especially focusing on grains, concentrate on artificial
selection and genetic changes to domesticated plants
• But other animals and plants (like trees or root crops that reproduce by
cloning) have more subtle mechanisms of human intervention
• Some anthros set a high bar between ‘wild’ and ‘domesticated’: genetic
isolation or complete reproductive dependence on humans
• Domestication – pattern of human behaviour with a range of biological
consequences, both for humans and environment
• Key criteria: although humans not aware of all the consequences (and could
not be), conscious intent and rapid cultural learning makes domestication
different from other inter-species mutualism
Evidence of early domestication:
• Direct evidence of domestication difficult because same plants often exist wild
• Sometimes evidence of plants are found outside their natural range – plants
show up where they shouldn’t
• Increasingly, indirect evidence from land; modification of drainage, shifts in
pollen or intentional burning
• In animals, harvesting strategies might be detected in remains (e.g. killing of
surplus mates)
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Economic modes (production of food):
• Hunting; killing live animals
• Foraging; diverse strategies – finding food growing naturally
• Farming; different forms: sedentary farming, horticulture
• Herding
• In fact, there are middle grounds between these basic modes of producing food
• For example, altering environment to produce more game animals or sowing
trees (e.g. Amazon – encouraging trees they like, cutting trees they do not like
= altered)
• Indigenous forms of ‘resource management’ e.g. in Australia and Americans
Centres of Domestication:
• Last part of timeline – starts in the ‘Neolithic’ or ‘New Stone Age’
• Where did it happen?
o 10 major centres of planet domestication = agriculture has been
independently invented multiple times; rice, sunflower, cotton, yam,
banana, taro, corn, sweet potato etc. (Africa, Near East, East Asia,
Europe, North America, Pacific islands, South America)
• Orgin and spread of agriculture:
o Middle eastern goats – diffuses out of there and spreads out around the
world eventually
Prehistory of agriculture: Neolithic and ‘broad spectrum’ revolutions –
• ‘Broad Spectrum Revolution’
o End of last ice age, approx. 12-8000 years ago, humans were primarily
big game hunters and opportunistic gathers (began diversified
activities)
o Ken Flannery proposed the idea in 1968
o BSR theory = population growth in the best (optimal) areas led to
population pressures in nearby regions when ‘daughter’ groups out-
migrated
o Looking for food in marginal areas led to wider range of games, plants
and invertebrates
o People tried to move cereal grains and plant foods into new habitats,
encouraging more widespread growth
o The shift in foraging and gathering patterns led to population growth
which laid the foundation for Neolithic Revolution, the move to
agriculture and settled life
o Sedentary life preceded the move to agriculture
The Fertile Crescent:
• 11,000 BP Natufians in ‘fertile crescent’
• Four climate-geography zones: high plateau, hilly flanks, steppe and alluvial
plains
• Agriculture did not begin where stands of grain were naturally abundant (hilly
flanks), but where people tried to artificially extend stands of grain
• First sedentary villages in hilly flank area (vertical economy)
• Drying of climate led to experimentation
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find more resources at oneclass.com
‘Vertical economy’ and agriculture’s origins:
• Mountainous or hilly terrain produces several vertically-separated ecological
zones. Geographically close but ecologically distinct
• Humans may seek to move plants to adjacent, but different ecological zones
o Goal is preservation of natural resource in adjacent, unnatural area
• Vertical pattern followed in some zones of domestication: Middle East, Peru,
Mexico
Why did agriculture arise?
• Environmental causes = a brief return to Ice Age conditions around 13,000-
11,600 BP made environment more arid – drove humans to agriculture
• Population dynamics = increasing population led to ‘food crisis’ → people
abandoned easier, more nutritious foraging and hunting to more labour
intensive, low return and delayed satisfaction of tending of grains because
land could support larger population
o Binford: more than 9 people/100km squared forces change in
subsistence
• Social prestige or psychological explanations = agriculture arose in areas of
plenty because of desire for aggrandisement (e.g. competitive feasting)
o Domestication allows ownership, private property and accumulation
• Conceptual change = humans started to see themselves as no longer natural
• Agriculture did not always start in the same place as centres of origin of food
production, other places with most productive agricultural areas of the modern
world
Wild to domestic in plants:
• Domestication can produce plants that would not do well in natural selection
• Many traits that are advantageous for domestication are contrary to wild
survival of plant:
o Decrease fertility (fewer, larger seeds)
o Decrease spread (‘shatter-proof’ grasses like wheat)
o Loss of flowering (some potatoes) or seeding (bananas, oranges, some
figs) – dependent on human cultivation
o Other changes: thin-shelled nuts, potatoes close to plant
• E.g. einkorn wheat
o Wild einkorn has traits that assist in reproduction – spikelets shatter,
equipped to disperse including by catching on animals, developed
barbs and awns, spikelets sharp and tough to penetrate ground clutter
o Domesticated variety is ineffective self-reproducer – holds too tightly
to stalk and does not disperse effectively
• Wheat and artificial selection:
o The selection of wheat and barley was not always intentional or
conscious
o E.g. ‘selecting’ for shatter-resistant grass likely happened because of
method of harvesting – easily shattered would lose seed before moving
o May have ‘intentionally’ selected for thin husk by throwing out
difficult-to-hull seed
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Dogs, bottle gourcs (used to carry water) and figs (uneased relationship with us) Evidence of early domestication: direct evidence of domestication difficult because same plants often exist wild, sometimes evidence of plants are found outside their natural range plants show up where they shouldn"t. Increasingly, indirect evidence from land; modification of drainage, shifts in pollen or intentional burning. In animals, harvesting strategies might be detected in remains (e. g. killing of surplus mates) Indigenous forms of resource management" e. g. in australia and americans. In fact, there are middle grounds between these basic modes of producing food. Orgin and spread of agriculture: middle eastern goats diffuses out of there and spreads out around the world eventually. Prehistory of agriculture: neolithic and broad spectrum" revolutions . Broad spectrum revolution": end of last ice age, approx. Vertical economy" and agriculture"s origins: mountainous or hilly terrain produces several vertically-separated ecological zones.
