The First Farmers

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The First Farmers
AnthropologyThe Exploration of Human
Diversity 11th Edition Conrad Phillip Kottak
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The First Farmers

• The Neolithic
• The First Farmers and Herders in the Middle East
• Other Old World Farmers
• The First American Farmers
• Explaining the Neolithic
• Costs and Benefits

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The Neolithic

• Changes in human subsistence techniques resulted
  from combination of human invention (e.g., the
  Neolithic revolution) and changes in
  environmental pressures (such as post-glacial
  warming)

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The Neolithic

• Neolithic period originally referred only to
  the presence of advanced stone toolmaking
  techniques

• Now refers to that period in a given region
  wherein the first signs of domestication are
  present with which Neolithic tools are commonly
  associated

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The Neolithic

• By 7500 B.P., most Middle Easterners moving away
  from a broad spectrum foraging pattern toward
  more specialized economies based on fewer species

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The First Farmers and Herders in the Middle East

• The Fertile Crescents Environmental Zones

• High plateau
• Hilly flanks
• Steppe
• Alluvial plain

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The First Farmers and Herders in the Middle East

• Deliberate cultivation eventually became most
  intensely practiced on the alluvial plain

Did not start there because climate was too dry,
requiring irrigation
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The First Farmers and Herders in the Middle East

• In the hilly flanks, habitual harvesting of wild
  grains did occur

Suggested that this abundance led to the first
sedentary villages (the Natufians) dependent on
harvesting wild grains
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The First Farmers and Herders in the Middle East

• Deliberate cultivation most likely came in
  response to documented climatic changes (a drying
  trend, 11,000 B.P., shrinking the zone of
  abundant wild grain)

Led inhabitants on the fringe of the hilly flanks
to artificially duplicate the dense stands of
wheat and barley that grew in the hilly flanks
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The First Farmers and Herders in the Middle East

• Sedentary village life developed before farming
  and herding in the Middle East

• Prior to domestication, favored Hilly Flanks zone
  had densest human population

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The First Farmers and Herders in the Middle East

• Many of the places where food production evolved
  (Middle East, Peru, Mesoamerica) were areas of
  vertical economy

• Vertical economiespatterned adaptation that
  occurs in areas where several different
  ecological zones in hilly or mountainous terrain
  occur close to one another

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The First Farmers and Herders in the Middle East

• The Vertical Economy of the Ancient Middle East

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The First Farmers and Herders in the Middle East

• Genetic Changes and Domestication

• In wild grains, the axis (the stem connecting the
  seed to the stalk) is brittle
• Allows the grain to reseed itself easily
• Humans selected grains in which the axis was
  tougher, allowing less grain to fall to the
  ground, thus raising yields
• First as an accidental by-product of harvesting

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The First Farmers and Herders in the Middle East

• Genetic Changes and Domestication
• Humans also selected plants which were more
  easily husked

• Humans selected woolly animals from among wild
  sheep (who are not normally woolly), thus
  acquiring livestock better suited to lowland heat
  and from which to obtain wool
• Fossil remains indicate that domestication of
  sheep and goats was accompanied by a decrease in
  the size of the animal

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The First Farmers and Herders in the Middle East

• A Head of Wheat or Barley

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The First Farmers and Herders in the Middle East

• Food Production and the State

• The early stages of food production in the Middle
  East marked by gradual transition from foraging
  to producing economies

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The First Farmers and Herders in the Middle East

• Food Production and the State
• Changes caused by food production forced other
  areas to respond (e.g., in the hilly flanks,
  people had to begin cultivating grains wild
  yields were no longer sufficient)

• Population increase
• Resulting migration
• Also gradual, general population increase spurred
  spread of food production

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Other Old World Farmers

• Food production spread out from the Middle East

• Trade
• Diffusion of plants, animals, products, and
  information
• Migration of farmers
• Egypts Nile Valley
• Europe
• India
• Pakistan

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Other Old World Farmers

• The African Neolithic Nabta Plays

• Considerable complexity exited in southern
  Egypts Neolithic economy and social system
• First occupied around 12000 B.P.

By 9000 B.P. people lived at Nabta Playa
year-round
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Other Old World Farmers

• The African Neolithic Nabta Playas
• Around 7500 B.P. new settlers occupied Nabta
  after a major drought

• Seems to have been center for prehistoric herders
• Also was ceremonial center

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Other Old World Farmers

• The Neolithic in Europe and Asia

• Around 8000 B.P., communities on Europe's
  Mediterranean shores started shifting from
  foraging to farming
• By 6000 B.P., there were thousands of farming
  villages as far east as Russia and as far west as
  northern France

Domestication and Neolithic economies spread
rapidly across Eurasia
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Other Old World Farmers

• The Neolithic in Europe and Asia
• China was one of the first world areas to develop
  farming

Northern Chinese also domesticated dogs, pigs,
and possibly cattle, goats, and sheep by 7000 B.P.
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Other Old World Farmers

• The Neolithic in Europe and Asia

• Recent discoveries by Chinese archaeologists
  suggest rice was domesticated in Yangtze River
  corridor of southern China as early as 8400 B.P.
• It appears that food production arose
  independently at least seven times in different
  world areas

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Other Old World Farmers

• Seven World Areas Where Food Production Was
  Independently Invented

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The First American Farmers

• Americas First Immigrants

• America first settled by immigrant H. sapiens
  from Asia

Followed big game (mammoth) herds across
Beringia, perhaps 25,000 years ago
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The First American Farmers

• Americas First Immigrants
• Early American Indians, Paleoindians, hunted
  horses, camels, bison, elephants, mammoths, and
  giant sloths

Clovis Traditionsophisticated stone technology
based on a point that was fastened to the end of
a hunting spear
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The First American Farmers

• The Foundations of Food Production

• Big-game-focused foraging was widely successful
  strategy in North America
• Caused independent development of food production
  in the New World to occur 3,000 to 4,000 years
  after it occurred in Europe and Africa
• Large game animals not domesticated in the New
  World
• Staple crops in the New World were maize,
  potatoes, and manioc

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The First American Farmers

• Early Farming in the Mexican Highlands

• Inhabitants first practiced broad spectrum
  foraging

Foragers practiced a seasonal economy, making
societal and geographical adjustments as they
moved
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The First American Farmers

• Early Farming in the Mexican Highlands

• Valley of Oaxaca became the original center of
  maize domestication
• The apparent ancestor of maize was a wild grass,
  teocentli
• Experienced combination of incidental and
  intentional selective pressures due to gathering
  and cultivation
• Several millennia passed after the origin of
  cultivation before the first states arose

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The First American Farmers

• From Early Farming to the State

• Food production led to the early village farming
  community
• Humid lowlands supported maize farming

Around 3500 B.P., sedentary life developed
separately in Mexico at Gulf Coast and the
Pacific
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The First American Farmers

• From Early Farming to the State
• Early village farming communities also developed
  in a few highland valleys such as Oaxaca

• Conditions uniquely (for the mountains) favorable
  to cultivation
• Constant water sources (for pot irrigation)
• Later frost

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The First American Farmers

• From Early Farming to the State
• Maize reached the lowlands by 3500 B.P. where, in
  combination with the easy water, longer growing
  season, and rich adjacent microenvironments,
  maize cultivation quickly gave rise to sedentary
  village farming communities

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The First American Farmers

• The Ancestors of Native Americans Came to North
  America as Migrants from Asia

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Explaining the Neolithic

• Several factors converged to make domestication
  happen and promote its spread

• Development of full-fledged Neolithic economy
  required settling down
• Sedentism especially attractive when several
  species of plants and animals available locally

Fertile Crescent had the largest Mediterranean
climate with the highest species diversity
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Explaining the Neolithic

• Full-fledged Neolithic economy requires minimal
  set of nutritious domesticates

• Some world areas managed independently to invent
  domestication, but inventory too meager to
  maintain Neolithic economy

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Explaining the Neolithic

• Presence or absence of domesticable animals helps
  explain the divergent trajectories

• Perhaps key factor in domestication is animal
  social structure
• Easiest wild animals to domesticate live in
  hierarchical herds

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Explaining the Neolithic

• Geography and the Spread of Food Productions

• Geography of Old World facilitated diffusion of
  plants, animals, technology, and information
• In Eurasia, plants and animals could spread more
  easily east-west than north south
• Common day lengths
• Similar seasonal variations

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Explaining the Neolithic

• Geography and the Spread of Food Productions
• Spread of Middle Eastern crops southward into
  Africa eventually halted by climatic contrasts

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Explaining the Neolithic

• Geography and the Spread of Food Productions
• In what is now the U.S., east-west spread of
  farming from southeast to southwest slowed by dry
  climates and Texas and southern great plains

Lack of large animals suitable to domestication
also slowed down Neolithic transition in the
Americas
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Costs and Benefits

• Food production brought the advantages of
  discovery and invention

• Learned to spin and weave
• Made pottery, bricks, and arched masonry
• Learned to smelt and cast metals
• Develop trade and commerce by land and sea

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Costs and Benefits

• By 5500 B.P. Middle Easterners living in vibrant
  cities with markets, streets, temples, and palaces

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Costs and Benefits

• New economy also brought hardship

• Food producers typically work harder than
  foragers
• Herds, fields, and irrigation systems need care

Producers have more children than foragers,
increasing child care demands
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Costs and Benefits

• New economy also brought hardship
• Public health declines

• Diets less varied
• Disease easier to spread
• Social inequality and poverty increased
• Rate at which human beings degraded environments
  increased with food production