Making a Living

1
Chapter 7

• Making a Living

2
What We Will Learn

• What are the different ways by which societies
  get their food?
• How do technology and environment influence food
  getting strategies?
• How have humans adapted to their environments
  over the ages?

3
Five Major Food Gathering Strategies

• Food collection collecting vegetation, hunting
  animals, and fishing.
• Horticulture plant cultivation with simple tools
  and small plots of land, relying solely on human
  power.
• Pastoralism keeping domesticated animals and
  using their products as a major food source.

4
Five Major Food Gathering Strategies

• Agriculture horticulture using animal or
  mechanical power and some form of irrigation.
• Industrialization production of food through
  complex machinery.

5
Human Adaptation

• Humans adapt to climates in two ways
• Culturally - dietary patterns, levels of
  activities
• Biologically - changes in the body

6
Food Gathering and the Environment

• Most anthropologists agree that the environment
  sets limits on the form that food-getting
  patterns may take. Cultures help people adapt to
  inhospitable environments.

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Characteristics of Food Collecting Societies

• Low population densities.
• Usually nomadic or semi nomadic rather than
  sedentary.
• Basic social unit is the family or band.
• Contemporary food-collecting peoples occupy the
  remote and marginally useful areas of the earth.

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Carrying Capacity

• The maximum number of people a given society can
  support, given the available resources.

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Optimal Foraging Theory

• A theory that foragers look for those species of
  plants and animals that will maximize their
  caloric intake for the time spent hunting and
  gathering foods.

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Food Collecting

• A form of subsistence that relies on the
  procurement of animal and plant resources found
  in the natural environment (aka foraging and
  hunting and gathering).

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Historically Known Foragers
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Question

• _______ is a basic form of plant cultivation
  using simple tools, small plots of land, and
  relies on human power.
• Pastoralism
• Horticulture
• Food collection
• Agriculture

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Answer b

• Horticulture is a basic form of plant cultivation
  using simple tools, small plots of land, and
  relies on human power.

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Question

• The gathering of wild vegetation and the hunting
  of small game is the strategy of
• horticulture.
• pastoralism.
• agriculture.
• food collection.

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Answer d

• The gathering of wild vegetation and the hunting
  of small game is the strategy of food collection.

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Neolithic RevolutionFood Producing Societies

• Transition from food collection to food
  production began 10,000 years ago
• Humans began to cultivate crops and keep herds of
  animals.
• Humans were able to produce food rather than rely
  only on what nature produced.

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Ju/hoansi

• Despite popular misconceptions, foragers such as
  the Ju/hoansi do not live on the brink of
  starvation.

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Inuit

• To survive in their harsh environment, the Inuit
  from Nunavut, Canada, have had to develop a
  number of creative hunting strategies, including
  the recent adoption of snowmobiles.

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Changes Resulting From Food Production

• Increased population.
• Populations became more sedentary.
• Stimulated a greater division of labor.
• Decline in overall health reduced the life
  expectancy from 26 to 19 years.

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Why Food Production Led to Declining Health

• Foragers had a more balanced diet (plants and
  animal proteins).
• Farmers ran the risk of malnutrition or
  starvation if the crops failed.
• Increased population brought people into greater
  contact and made everyone more susceptible to
  parasitic and infectious diseases.

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Question

• It is not until ________, some 10, 000 years ago,
  that human beings began producing food by
  horticulture or animal husbandry.
• the industrial revolution
• the French revolution
• the neolithic revolution
• the aquaculture revolution

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Answer c

• It is not until the neolithic revolution some 10,
  000 years ago, that human beings began producing
  food by horticulture or animal husbandry.

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Horticulture

• The simplest type of farming, which involves the
  use of basic hand tools rather than plows or
  machinery driven by animals or engines.
• Horticulturalists produce low yields and
  generally do not have sufficient surpluses to
  develop extensive market systems.
• The land is neither irrigated nor enriched by the
  use of fertilizers.

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Shifting Cultivation (Swidden, Slash and Burn)

• A form of plant cultivation in which seeds are
  planted in the fertile soil prepared by cutting
  and burning the natural growth relatively short
  periods of cultivation are followed by longer
  periods of fallow.

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Pastoralism

• Involves keeping domesticated herd animals and is
  found in areas of the world that cannot support
  agriculture because of inadequate terrain, soils,
  or rainfall.
• Associated with geographic mobility, because
  herds must be moved periodically to exploit
  seasonal pastures.

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Pastoralism 2 Movement Patterns

• Transhumance
• Some of the men move livestock seasonally to
  different pastures while the women, children, and
  other men remain in permanent settlements.
• Nomadism
• There are no permanent villages, the whole social
  unit of men, women, and children moves the
  livestock to new pastures.

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Tibetan Yak Herders

• Tibetan yak herders must movetheir animals
  periodically to ensureadequate pasturage.

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Social Functions of Cattle

• The use of livestock by pastoralists not only for
  food and its byproducts but also for purposes
  such as marriage, religion, and social
  relationships.
• Stock friendship
• A gift of livestock from one man to another to
  strengthen their friendship.

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Agriculture

• Uses technology such as irrigation, fertilizers,
  and mechanized equipment.
• Produces high yields and supports large
  populations.
• Associated with permanent settlements, cities,
  and high levels of labor specialization.

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Draft Animals

• The use of draft animals, as practiced by this
  farmer from Hoi An, Vietnam, involves a more
  complex form of crop production than swidden
  farming.

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Agriculture Costs of Greater Productivity

• Can support many times more people per unit of
  land than the horticulturalist.
• Agriculturalists must devote vast numbers of
  hours of hard work prepare the land.
• Intensive agriculture requires a much higher
  investment of capital.

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Terraced Farming

• This terraced form of farming, as found in
  Indonesia, involves a long-term commitment to the
  land and a considerable expenditure of labor.

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Peasantry

• Rural peoples, usually on the lowest rung of
  societys ladder, who provide urban inhabitants
  with farm products but have little access to
  wealth or political power.

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Question

• Because of its reliance on animal power and
  technology, ________ differs from horticulture,
  and is a more intensive and efficient system.
• horticulture
• nomadism
• agriculture
• pastoralism

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Answer c

• Because of its reliance on animal power and
  technology, agriculture differs from
  horticulture, and is a more intensive and
  efficient system.

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Industrialization

• A process resulting in the economic change from
  home production of goods to large-scale
  mechanized factory production.

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Ecosystems

• This Kayapo woman from Brazil knows not to kill
  the foraging ants in her garden because they
  actually weed and fertilize her crops.

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Industrialized Food Production

• Uses more powerful sources of energy.
• Requires
• High levels of technology (such as tractors and
  combines)
• Mobile labor force
• Complex system of markets

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Features of Four Major Food Procurement Categories
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Features of Four Major Food Procurement Categories