Food, Land and People and World Civilizations

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Food, Land and People and World Civilizations

• Debra Spielmaker, Director
• Utah Agriculture in the Classroom

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Which of the following was the most important
advancement in early civilizations?

• Toolmaking (technology)
• Agriculture (farming, production processing)
• Writing (communication)

Are these areas of development as important
today? What is agriculture?
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Why farm?

• Decline in the availability of wild foods
• Depletion of wild game less rewarding, easier to
  gather grains
• Increased technology for collecting, processing,
  and storing wild foods
• Increasing population, increase food production,
  better diet
• Adopt food production or die at the hand of those
  who have (soldiers germs)

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Centers of origin of food production
A question mark indicates this may be an origin
or influenced by the spread of food production.
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Worlds best soils for growing food
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Worlds best soils for growing food
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Major crop types around the ancient world
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Domestic Mammals

• Meat production plus!
• milk
• transportation
• plowing
• wool
• hides
• Evolution with humans
• immunity to diseases (measles, tuberculosis,
  smallpox, flu, pertussis, malaria)

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Mammalian Candidates for Domestication

• Why some animals were not domesticated
• Diet, bad feed conversion or carnivores
• Growth rate too slow
• Problems with captive breeding
• Nasty disposition
• Tendency to panic

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Domestication of Animals
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Fertile Crescent

• Civilization cities, writing, empires, and
  agriculture.
• Mediterranean climate.
• Easily domesticated plants.
• Most of the plants pollinate themselves.

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Seeds of Change, most influential plants that
changed the world.

• Quinine
• Potato
• Sugarcane
• Cotton
• Tea

• Would the world have been without widespread
  black slavery if there
• had been no sugar and cotton plantations?
• What would Africa and the United States be like
  now?
• Would China have become a major world power in
  the 19th century if it
• had not been for the tea and opium trade?
• Would John F. Kennedy have become a U.S.
  President?

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Tomatoes, Potatoes, Corn and Beans

• Plants of the Americas
• Tomato
• Potato
• Corn
• Beans
• Chocolate
• Peppers
• Corn

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Classroom Ideas

• Taste test of old world and new world foods.
• Plan a menu using a particular civilizations
  food.
• Show video, Foods of the Ancient World (from Utah
  AITC).
• Dissect a typical meal in the U.S. defining the
  foods origins.
• Locate on a world map the location of old and new
  world foods, discuss how they have been traded
  and changed societies and culture.

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Geography, determines agriculturewhich creates
civilization and changes cultures.
How important is agriculture today? Have our
uses of agriculture changed?
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Food, Land and People and World Civilizations