ANTH 2820 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Coevolution, Pleistocene
14 Feb 2017
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Document Summary
Farming and sedentary are two different things. Environmental hypotheses: environment changed so they had to become farmers. Demographic/population increase hypothesis: population increased so they had to farm. Climate changes at the end of the pleistocene so people flocked to oasis"s. Humans knew plants and animals so much better, knew how to domesticate them. Problems: climate did not become drier, it became warmer and wetter: also food producing communities outside of these oases. Domestication happened in anatolia because that"s where their ancestors. Problems: deterministic, relies on an unexplainable phenomenon; several neolithic sites found outside this habitable zone. Hunter gatherers were in balance with their environment, optimal zones, where they could survive. But when population got to big, people got pushed into the marginal zones where they had to adopt farming in order to feed themselves. Problems: climate change and population growth instrumenting change, humans puppets, leaving out the role of culture.
