Domestication of Plants and Animals

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Domestication of Plants and Animals
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Subsistence technologies

• Foragers or hunter-gatherer-collectors
• Before 10,000 BP all over the world
• Today few exist and then only in marginal
  environments
• Degree of sedentism varied
• Can ethnographically studied groups provide an
  analogy for prehistoric people?Ju/hoansi, Inuit
• Link between subsistence and social, political
  and economic organization
• Sparse versus rich environments
• Problem of historical relics and people frozen
  in time
• Isolation and contact

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Subsistence technologies

• Horticulturalists
• Cultivation with simple tools and methods
• Digging stick and hoe
• No permanent fieldsmobility through time
• Two forms
• Shifting cultivation with slash and burn
  techniques
• Long-growing tree cropseg. Sannai Maruyama
• Horticulturalists also hunt, fish and gather and
  may raise animalspigs, chickens, goats and sheep
• Increased sedentism, larger populations, some
  social differentiation

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Subsistence technologies

• Pastoralists
• Domesticated animalssheep, goats, cattle
• Low population density
• Usually mobile rather than sedentary (Mobility
  may be seasonal)
• Trade very important
• Social differentiation

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Subsistence technologies

• Intensive agriculture
• Permanent cultivation of fields
• Transformation of the landscape through
• Fertilization, irrigation, crop rotation
• More complex toolsplows, draught animals
• Hunting and collecting continued as well as use
  of domesticated animals
• Sedentism and urbanization
• Large populations
• Trade
• Social differentiation, political complexity

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Horticulture
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Upper Paleolithic

• Hunter, collector and gatherers
• Tundra, plains, savannah
• Concentration on migratory herd animals
• Antelope
• Wild cattle
• Mammoth
• Bison
• Mobile groups
• Paleo-Indian name for this period in North America

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Mesolithic

• After 14,000 BP but varies considerably around
  the world
• Mesolithic name in Europe and parts of western
  Asia (the Middle East)
• ArchaicNorth America (10,000 BP)
• Beginning stages of Jomon in Japan (12,000 BP)
• Hunter-gatherer-collector/forager

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Mesolithic

• Change in subsistence base from intensive
  big-game hunting to broad spectrum collecting
• Fish, shellfish, small animals, plants
• http//www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1023519
• Less mobility although degree of sedentism
  differed between regions and groups of people

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Examples of Mesolithic

• Europe
• Glaciers and ice-caps retreated until by 10,000
  BP sea levels had risen and Europe had warmed-up
• Increased littoral zones and rich environments
  for foragers using fish, shellfish and wild
  plants
• Maglemosians

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Examples of Mesolithic

• Near East
• Similar environmental changes to Europe and a
  similar response by people living in what is now
  Turkey, Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon etc.
• Wild wheat and barley readily available and
  harvested using stone sickles
• Sedentism and storage of grains as well as
  processing of grains harvested from the wild
• Natufians in present-day Israel

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Examples of Mesolithic

• Mesoamerica (Central America)
• After 10,000 BP climate change and shift to
  broad-spectrum collecting
• Deer, antelope, bison, small mammals, plants,
  shellfish
• Ground-stone
• Highland Mesoamerican Archaic in present-day
  central and southern Mexico

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MesolithicWhy broad-spectrum collecting?

• Climate change
• Decrease in big-game
• Increase in littoral resources and plants and
  animals in deciduous forests
• Global population increaseMark Cohens filling
  up the world hypothesis

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MesolithicDemographic and social consequences
of broad-spectrum collecting

• Sedentism?
• Sedentism varied
• Were the resources used plentiful and always
  available?
• Population growth
• Linked to sedentism
• Greater fertility of women (biological)
• Advantages of more children (social)

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Domestication of Plants and Animals

• Domestication plants or animal that depends on
  humans for survival
• Modification by people from wild forms
• Cannot survive over long periods of time without
  human intervention
• Genetic transformation
• Barley and wheatfragile to tough rachis and
  larger seeds
• Goats and sheepstructure of body and age sex
  rations differ in domesticated forms

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Domestication of Plants and Animals

• Centres of domestication in
• Near East8000 BP
• China6000 BP
• Southeast Asia (Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia,
  Vietnam)6000 BP
• Africa6000 BP
• Highland Mesoamerica7000 BP
• Peruvian central Andes7000 BP
• Eastern Woodlands2000 BP

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Domestication of Plants and Animals

• Plowing, fertilizing, fallowing, irrigation
• Sedentism
• Use of metal, ground stone
• Social stratification and craft specialization
• Trade

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Domestication of Plants and Animals

• Why domestication?
• Gordon Childes Oasis hypothesis1950s
• Climate change at end of glacial period in Near
  East and northern Africa
• Drier climate resulted in people forced into
  small oasis areas where wind plants still existed
  and domesticating these

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Domestication of Plants and Animals

• Why domestication?
• Robert Braidwoods critique of Childeearly 1960s
• Climate change not as dramatic as Childe thought
• Similar climate change had occurred before in
  this regionwhy did people not domesticate then?
• Braidwood and Gordon Willey
• Readiness hypothesis
• People needed to learn about environment and have
  a culture that was ready for domestication

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Domestication of Plants and Animals

• Why domestication?
• Lewis Binford and Kent Flanneryearly 1970s
• We need to explain why people were not ready
  for domestication earlier
• No economic incentive to domesticate since people
  are often less well-off after domestication
• Population growth in optimum areas resulted in
  people being pushed to the margins. These people
  domesticated plants and animals
• Local population-pressure hypothesis works in
  some examples (i.e.. the Levant) but not in
  otherspartially explanatory

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Domestication of Plants and Animals

• Why domestication?
• Mark Cohens global population pressure
  hypothesislate 1970s and early 1980s
• Agriculture adopted around the world in a span of
  a few thousand years because people had no-where
  left to migrate.
• People could not relieve population pressure so
  needed
• To collect less nutritious and favoured foods
• To intensify food production through cultivation
• Become sedentary

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Domestication of Plants and Animals

• Why domestication?
• In the 1990s archaeologists went back to the
  climate change hypothesis to explain
  domestication of plants in the Near East
• 13,000-12,000 BP
• Hotter, drier summers and colder winters
• Increase in wild grains that produce seeds
  annually
• People became sedentary foragers who were
  dependant on these wild grains
• Sedentism
• Population increase
• Decrease in foraged resources
• Crops planted to get through the difficult
  seasons when wild resources not available

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Domestication of Plants and Animals

• Why domestication?
• Mesoamerica
• No evidence of climate change or population
  pressure
• Domestication of plants that were desired, but
  not for foodbottle gourds for religious or
  ceremonial purposes
• Maizebeans, maize and squashit was good to eat
  and easy to grow

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Domestication of Plants and Animals

• Consequences
• Sedentism
• Population increase
• Health decline for some people
• Social stratification
• Social complexity

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Neolithic

• Pottery
• Bone and wood tools
• Houses and villages
• Elaborate cultural differences between groups of
  peopleethnicity
• Social stratificationpolitical and economic