Patterns of Subsistence

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Chapter 7

• Patterns of Subsistence

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What Is Adaptation?

• Adaptation Any change in the structure or
  functioning of an organism that makes it better
  suited to its environment.
• This process leads to changes in the organisms
  and impacts their environment.
• The human species adapts biologically and
  culturally.

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Adaptation Vs. Acclimatization

• Adaptation Anything that helps an organism
  survive in its environment which usually occurs
  over several generations.
• Acclimatization The short-term process of
  adjusting to changes in an environment such as
  shivering for temperature regulation or
  increasing red blood cell counts to acclimatize
  to high altitudes. Usually occurs in one lifetime.

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Physical Vs. Behavioral Adaptation
Physical Structural Behavioral Cultural

• Structural Adaptation Physical features of an
  organism that change to allow an animal to
  survive in its environment.
• Behavioral (Cultural) Adaptations Things
  organism do to survive in an environment.

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Structural Adaptations Camouflage

• Coloration and protective resemblance allow an
  animal to blend into its environment. 
• Camouflage makes it hard for enemies to single
  out individuals.  

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Structural Mimicry

• Mimicry allows one animal to look, sound, or act
  like another animal to fool predators into
  thinking it is poisonous or dangerous. 

Monarch Viceroy Poisonous Non-poisonous
Coral snake Red milk snake Poisonous Non-poisono
us
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Structural Coverings, etc

• The skin covering parts claws, beaks, feet,
  skulls, teeth, etc.
• The elephants trunk is a physical adaptation
  that helps it to clean itself, eat, drink, and to
  pick things up.

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Why we dont all look alike
Bergmanns Rule Within a species the body mass
increases with latitude and colder climate (i.e.,
larger sub-species are found at higher altitudes
or colder climates.
Allens Rule In warm blooded species, the
relative size of exposed portions of the body
decreases with decreases of mean temperature.
Glogers Rule within a species more heavily
pigmented forms tend to be found in more humid
environments (e.g., near the equator most
studied in birds). Caveats Tibetans (high UV
radiation) Inuits (diet high in vitamin D).
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Behavioral Adaptation

• Behavioral adaptations include activities (i.e.,
  actions behavior) that help an animal survive. 
  
• Behavioral adaptations can be learned or
  instinctive.
• Instinctive migrating, hibernating, defending
  oneself, etc
• Learned Obtained by interacting with the
  environment and cannot be passed on to the next
  generation except by teaching.

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How Do Humans Adapt Culturally?

• Through cultural adaptation, humans develop ways
  of doing things that are compatible with the
  resources they have available to them and within
  the limitations of the various habitats in which
  they live.
• Adaptations may be remarkably stable for long
  periods of time, even thousands of years. - And
  other times it can change quickly (such as
  subsistence patterns).

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Human Adaptations

• Food foraging is a universal type of human
  adaptation and typically involves geographic
  mobility including migration.
• Adaptations involving domestication of plants and
  animals, began to develop in some parts of the
  world about 10,000 years ago.
• Horticulture led to more permanent settlements
  while pastoralism required mobility to seek out
  pasture and water.
• Cities began to develop as early as 5,000 years
  ago in some world regions.

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Adaptation in Cultural Evolution

• Human groups adapt to their environments by means
  of their cultures.
• Cultural Evolution is the process of cultures
  changing over time.
• Not all changes turn out to be positive, nor do
  they improve conditions for every member of a
  society.
• Complex, urban societies are not more highly
  evolved than those of food foragers.

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Convergent Evolution

• In cultural evolution, convergent evolution is
  the development of similar cultural adaptations
  to similar environmental conditions by different
  peoples with different ancestral cultures.
  similarities are typically explained as the
  result of common adaptive solutions to similar
  environmental pressures.
• Structures that are the result of convergent
  evolution are called analogous structures or
  homoplasies they are not homologous structures,
  which have a common origin.

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Parallel Evolution

• In cultural evolution, the development of similar
  adaptations to similar environmental conditions
  by peoples whose ancestral cultures were similar.
• Parallel evolution is the independent evolution
  of similar traits, starting from a similar
  ancestral condition due to similar environments
  or other evolutionary pressures.

Marsupial mammals
Placental mammals
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Comanche Cheyenne

• Commanche Ancestors from highlands of southern
  Idaho.
• foragers, small animals, etc.
• Limited group size.
• Social power Shamans

• Cheyenne Ancestors from woodlands of Great
  lakes.
• Cultivated crops, gathering
• Gave up crop cultivation.

• Plains Indians such as the Comanche and Cheyenne
  developed similar cultures, as they had to adapt
  to similar environmental conditions.

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Culture Area

• This map shows the culture areas defined for
  North and Central America.
• Cultural Area a geographic region in which a
  number of societies follow similar patterns of
  life.

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Question

• A/an ____________ is a geographic region in which
  a number of different societies follow similar
  patterns of life.
• ecosystem
• culture core
• culture type
• culture area
• sphere of influence

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Question D

• A/an culture area is a geographic region in which
  a number of different societies follow similar
  patterns of life.

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Food Foraging Life Characteristics

• Move about a great deal.
• Small size of local groups (usually 100).
• Carrying Capacity number of people that the
  available resources can support (ecological
  factor).
• Density of social relations low number
  intensity of interactions among members higher
  means more opportunities for conflict (social
  factor).
• Egalitarian, populations have few possessions and
  share what they have.

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Question

• Which of the following does not correctly
  describe food foraging societies?
• They are egalitarian.
• They are small nomadic groups living within a
  fixed territory.
• They are primitive because they did not progress
  to a higher level.
• They are not very aggressive or warlike.
• They live in marginal areas of the world today.

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Answer C

• The following does not correctly describe food
  foraging societies
• They are primitive because they did not progress
  to a higher level.

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Interactions Impacts

• For 2,000 years, Bushmen have been interacting
  regularly with neighboring farmers and
  pastoralists.
• Much of the elephant ivory used for the keyboards
  on pianos so widely sought in 19th-century North
  America came from the Bushmen.

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Food Foragers and Population

• Frequent nursing of children over four or five
  years acts to suppress ovulation among food
  foragers such as Bushmen.
• As a consequence, women give birth to relatively
  few offspring at widely spaced intervals.

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Visual Counterpoint

• Food foragers such as the Ju/hoansi have a
  division of labor in which women gather and
  prepare bush food (here an ostrich egg omelet)
  and men usually do the hunting processing of
  larger game.

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Neolithic

• The New Stone Age prehistoric period beginning
  about 10,000 years ago in which peoples possessed
  stone-based technologies and depended on
  domesticated plants and/or animals.
• The first agricultural revolution the
  transition from hunting gathering communities
  bands.
• 7-8 separate locales worldwide with the earliest
  in the Middle East around 10,000 ya.
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vLdbnW-9c27U

Skara Brae Scotland. Mudbricks..
The Fertile Crescent.
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Animal Domestication - Regional

• Southwest Asia This area probably included some
  of the first domesticated dogs, sheep, goats and
  pigs.
• Central Asia People raised chicken and used
  Bactrian camels for carrying loads in Central
  Asia.
• Arabia As the name implies, the Arabian camel (a
  one-humped camel, also known as a dromedary)
  originated here.
• China China was home to early domestication of
  the water buffalo, pigs and dogs.
• Ukraine People in the area that is now Ukraine
  domesticated the wild tarpan horses that
  historians believe are the ancestors of modern
  horses.
• Egypt The donkey came in handy here, as it can
  work hard without much water and vegetation.
• South America The domesticated llama and alpaca
  came from this continent. Historians believe
  South Americans saved these species from the
  brink of extinction with domestication.

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Domestication of the Dog

• The modern dog evolved from the gray wolf. 1st
  animal to be domesticated.
• Oldest fossil dog from 14,000 ya although DNA
  suggest much older 15k 100k.

• Because wolves operate in packs, humans easily
  took the place of the "highest ranking wolf." So
  the animals quickly learned obedience.
• Domestication caused the development of floppy
  ears, short snouts, spotted coats, highly-set
  tails and even a tendency to bark.

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Domesticates in the Archaeological Record
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Social Evolution
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Horticulture

• Cultivation of crops carried out with simple hand
  tools such as digging sticks or hoes.
• slash-and-burn cultivation
• Also known as swidden farming.
• An extensive form of horticulture in which the
  natural vegetation is cut, the slash is
  subsequently burned, and crops are then planted
  among the ashes.
• Also used to raise cattle

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Slash-and-Burn Cultivation

• Reburning an old, overgrown slash-and-burn plot
  in the Amazon forest in Venezuela in preparation
  for new planting.
• Although it looks destructive, if properly
  carried out, slash-and-burn cultivation is an
  ecologically sound way of growing crops in the
  tropics.

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Pastoralism

• Subsistence that relies on raising herds of
  domesticated animals, such as cattle, sheep, and
  goats.
• Pastoralists are usually nomadic.

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Pastoral Nomads

• In the Zagros Mountains region of Iran, pastoral
  nomads follow seasonal pastures, migrating with
  their flocks over rugged terrain that includes
  perilously steep snowy passes and fast ice-cold
  rivers.

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Locations of Major Early Civilizations

• Civilizations of Central and South America
  developed independently of those in Africa and
  Eurasia.
• Chinese civilization may have developed
  independently of those in Mesopotamia, the
  Egyptian Valley, and the Indus Valley.

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Development of Cities

• Cities developed as intensified agricultural
  techniques created a surplus.
• Individuals were free to specialize full-time in
  other activities.
• http//video.google.com/videosearch?qthelostpyr
  amidsofcaralhlenemb0aqf

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Otzi Quiz

• How long ago did Otzi live? (A) 1,000 yrs (B)
  5,000 yrs (C) 10,000 yrs
• What did Otzi take with him to help him start
  fires on his journey through the Alps?
• (A) magnesium (B) matches (C) Charcoal
  (D) a lighter
• Otzi lived in the ____________ age. (A) Bronze
  (B) Copper (C) Stone
• Evidence suggests that Otzi spent his last hours
  battling before he died.
• (A) True (B) False
• The most recent evidence suggest that Otzi and
  his people lived a peaceful, egalitarian
  lifestyle. (A) True (B) False
• What do scientist believe Otzis tattoos were
  for?
• (A) Religious (B) Kills (C) Health care
  (D) Status
• It is well established that Otzi stood over 7
  feet tall. (A) True (B) False
• Otzi was (A) Male (B) Female