ANTH 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Niche Construction, Rachis, Domestication
Document Summary
Until 10,000 ya, humans and their hominin ancestors were all gathers and hunters living in bands . Then glaciers retreated and earth"s changing climate created new ecological settings. Scholars once thought all cases of domestication were caused by one universal factor: climate change at the end of the pleistocene period. Chronology of probably dates when various things were domesticated. Mario says a lot of mesoamerican plants were domesticated earlier. Niche construction is when an organism actively changes its environment or creates a new environment. Domestication of plants and animals is a form of niche construction because: reproduction of local species is interfered with by human action, human action changes local environmental settings. Sedentism or settling in one location became increasingly common for farmers. Animal domestication may have followed six stages. Stages of animal domestication: random hunting, controlled hunting, herd following, loose herding, close herding, factory farming.
