Chapter 10 The Neolithic Transition: The Domestication of Plants and Animals

Chapter PreviewWhen and Where Did the Change from Food Foraging to Food Production Begin?

Why Did the Change Take Place?

What Were the Consequences of the Neolithic Transition?

When and Where Did the Change from Food Foraging to Food Production Begin?

Mesolithic Roots of Farming and PastoralismRefers to the Middle Stone Age of Europe and Southwest Asia; began about 12,000 years ago.

The term Archaic cultures is used to refer to Mesolithic cultures in the Americas.

Mesolithic Roots of Farming and PastoralismAfter the extinction of Ice Age megafauna, hunters and gatherers expanded their repertoire of foods = broad spectrum revolution

This broadening of the diet could not have been accomplished without the technological changes associated with microliths

MicrolithsA small blade of flint or similar stone, several of which were hafted together in wooden handles to make tools.

Although a microlithic tradition existed in Central Africa by about 40,000 years ago, such tools did not become common elsewhere until the Mesolithic.

MicrolithsMicroliths could be attached to arrow or other tool shafts by using melted resin as a binder.

The Mesolithic peoples could make sickles, harpoons, arrows, knives, and daggers by fitting microliths into slots in wood, bone, or antler handles.

NatufiansThe Natufians from Southwest Asia were the earliest Mesolithic people known to have stored plant foods.Basin-shaped depressions are preserved in the rocks outside of their homes.

NatufiansLived at a time of dramatically changing climates in the region.

Shallow lakes dried up, leaving just three in the Jordan River Valley.

The plants best adapted to instability and seasonal aridity were annuals, including wild cereal grains and legumes.

NatufiansNatufians modified their subsistence practices:

Regularly fired the landscape to promote browsing by red deer and grazing by gazelles.

Placed greater emphasis on the collection of wild seeds from annual plants that could be stored through the dry season.

NeolithicThe New Stone Age; began about 11,000 years ago in Southwest Asia.

The Neolithic revolution refers to the profound cultural changes which followed the domestication of plants and animals by peoples with stone-based technologies, beginning about 10,000 years ago

The Neolithic and Cultural ChangeThe cultural changes associated with the Neolithic took thousands of years to develop.

Not everyone changed at the same rate or at the same time.

The Neolithic and Cultural ChangeThe source of all these changes was innovation = a new idea, method, or device that gains widespread acceptance in society. (1) primary innovation = the chance creation, invention, or discovery of a completely new idea, method, or device. (2) secondary innovation = the deliberate application or modification of an existing idea, method, or device.

DomesticationAn evolutionary process whereby humans modify, intentionally or unintentionally, the genetic makeup of plants or animals, sometimes to the extent that members of the population are unable to survive and/or reproduce without human assistance.Analysis of plant and animal remains at a site will indicate whether the occupants were food producers.

Evidence of Early Plant DomesticationDomesticated plants generally differ from their wild ancestors in the following ways: Increased size of edible partsreduction or loss of natural means of seed dispersalreduction or loss of protective devices such as husks or distasteful chemical compounds that keep animals from eating themloss of delayed seed germination development of simultaneous ripening of the seed or fruit.

Evidence of Early Animal DomesticationDomestication also produced changes in the skeletal structure of some animals:Most domesticated female sheep have no horns. The size of an animal or its parts can vary with domestication as seen in the smaller size of certain teeth of domesticated pigs compared to those of wild ones.

Domestication of MaizeTeosinte (A), compared to 5,500-year-old maize (B) and modern maize (C).

Teosinte, the wild grass from highland Mexico from which maize originated, is far less productive and doesnt taste very good.

Domestication transformed it into something highly desirable.

Why Did the Change Take Place?

Beginnings of Domestication Food production was not the result of new discoveries about planting, people were very knowledgeable about plants and animals. The switch to food production did not free people from hard work.Food production is not necessarily a more secure means of subsistence than foraging.

Oasis TheoryDomestication began because the oasis attracted hungry animals.The animals were too thin to eat, so people began to fatten them up. Theory fell out of favor as studies of the origins of domestication were begun in the late 1940s.

The Fertile Crescent

The Fertile CrescentDomestication began in the Fertile Crescent.Archaeological data suggest the domestication of rye as early as 13,000 years ago by people living at a site (Abu Hureyra) east of Aleppo, Syria, although wild plants and animals continued to be their major food sources. Over the next several millennia they became full-fl edged farmers, cultivating rye and wheat.By 10,300 years ago, others in the region were also growing crops.

Domestication of SheepDomestication of sheep resulted in evolutionary changes that created more wool.

Areas of Early Plant and Animal DomesticationDomestication also took place in the following areas:

Southeast Asiaparts of the Americas (Central America, the Andean highlands, the tropical forests of South America, and eastern North America)northern ChinaAfrica

Areas of Early Plant and Animal DomesticationSoutheast Asia is know for early rice cultivation and vegeculture = the cultivation of domesticated root crops, such as yams and taro

As plant domestication increased, so did societies based horticulture = cultivation of crops carried out with simple hand tools such as digging sticks or hoes.

Areas of Early Plant and Animal DomesticationDomestication took place in such widely scattered areas as Southwest Asia (A1), Central Africa (A2), China (B1), Southeast Asia (B2), Mesoamerica (C1), South America (C2), and North America (C3).

Nonedible Domesticates in PeruIn coastal Peru, the earliest domesticates were the non-edible bottle gourd (like the one shown to the left) and cotton. They were used to make nets and floats to catch fish, which was an important source of food.

Subsistence Trends in Mexicos Tehuacan Valley

Chili Peppers in MexicoIn Mexico, chili peppers have been a part of the diet for millennia (esp. as a flavor enhancer).This illustration from a 16th-century Aztec manuscript shows a woman threatening her child with punishment by being exposed to smoke from chili peppers.Chili smoke was also used as a kind of chemical weapon in warfare.

Domestication TodayWhen first begun, domestication was the outcome of traditional food-foraging activities. Today genetically engineered crops are being created to survive massive applications of herbicides and pesticides and not to produce viable seeds.

What Were the Consequences of the Neolithic Transition?

Consequences of DomesticationCrops become more productive and more vulnerable.Periodically population outstrips food supplies and people are apt to move into new regions. In this way, farming has often spread from one region to another, as into Europe from Southwest Asia.

The Spread of Food ProductionAlthough domestication increases productivity, it also increases instability. Varieties with the highest yields become the focus of human attention, while other varieties are less valued and ultimately ignored. Farmers become dependent on a rather narrow range of resources, compared to the wide range utilized by food foragers.

The Spread of Food ProductionFrom Southwest Asia, for instance, farming spread northwestward eventually to all of Europe, westward to North Africa, and eastward to India.

Domesticated variants also spread from China and Southeast Asia westward.

Sorghum and other domesticates also spread from West Africa, to the southeast, creating the modern far-reaching distribution of speakers of Bantu languages.

The Spread of Food ProductionThose who brought crops to new locations brought other things as well, including languages, beliefs, and new alleles for human gene pools.

Neolithic Culture: JerichoThe best known Neolithic site is Jericho, a farming community in the Jordan River Valley of Palestine. Excavations revealed the remains of a sizable farming community inhabited as early as 10,350 years ago.

Crops could be grown almost continuously, due to the presence of a spring and the rich soils of an Ice Age lake that had dried up some 3,000 years earlier.

Flood-borne deposits originating in the Judean highlands to the west regularly renewed soil fertility.

Neolithic Culture: JerichoTo protect against floods, mudflows, and invaders, the people of Jericho built massive walls of stone around it.

Inside the walls (6 1/2 feet wide and 12 feet high), as well as a large rock-cut ditch (27 feet wide and 9 feet deep), an estimated 400 to 900 people lived in houses of mud brick with plastered floors arranged around courtyards.

A stone tower that would have taken 100 people 104 days to build was located inside one corner of the wall.

Neolithic Culture: JerichoA cemetery reflects the sedentary life of these early people; nomadic groups rarely buried their dead in a single central location.

Close contact between farmers of Jericho and other villages is indicated by common features in art, ritual, use of prestige goods, and burial practices.

Other evidence of trade consists of obsidian and turquoise from Sinai as well as marine shells from the coast, all discovered inside the walls of Jericho.

Neolithic Material Culture: TechnologyPeople developed scythes, forks, hoes, and plows to replace their simple digging sticks.

Pestles and mortars were used for preparation of grain.

Plows were redesigned when domesticated cattle became available for use as draft animals.

Neolithic Material Culture: PotteryPottery vessels could be used for storing small grain, seeds, and other materials.

Pottery was also used for cooking, pipes, ladles, lamps, and other objects.

Some cultures used large vessels for disposal of the dead.

Widespread use of pottery is a good indication of a sedentary community.

Neolithic Material culture: PotteryThis pottery vessel from Turkey was made around 7,600 years ago. Pigs were under domestication as early as 10,500 to 11,000 years ago in southeastern Turkey.

Neolithic Material Culture: HousingSome Neolithic peoples constructed houses of wood, while others built elaborate shelters made of stone, sun-dried brick, or poles plastered together with mud or clay.

Although permanent housing frequently goes along with food production, there is evidence that housing could exist without food production. On the northwestern coast of North America, people lived in houses made of heavy planks hewn from cedar logs, yet their food consisted entirely of wild plants.

Neolithic Material Culture: ClothingFor the first time in history, clothing was made of woven textiles.

Raw materials came from:flax and cotton from farmingwool from domesticated sheepsilk from silk wormsspindle and loom from the human mind

Neolithic Architecture: StonehengeSometimes Neolithic villages created communal works. Stonehenge, England, dates back to about 4,500 years ago. Its construction relates to the new attitudes toward the earth and forces of nature associated with food production.

Neolithic Social Structurerelatively egalitarian with minimal division of labor some development of new and more specialized social roles

villages seem to have been made up of several households, each providing for most of its own needs

the organizational needs of society beyond the household level were probably met by kinship groups

The Neolithic and Human Biologythe teeth of Neolithic peoples show less wearpossible evidence of early dentistry (more dental decay?) in Pakistanthe bones of Neolithic peoples are less robust, and osteoarthritis (the result of stressed joint surfaces) is more common

The Neolithic and Human Biologyincreased mal-nutrition (reliance on a few crops) and possibility of periodic famineincreased sedentism (permanently living in one place) created hygiene and sanitation issuesdiseases acquired from domesticated animals

Diseases Acquired From Domesticated Animals

Human DiseaseAnimal with Most Closely Related PathogenMeaslesCattle (rinderpest)TuberculosisCattleSmallpoxCattle (cowpox) or other livestock with related pox virusesInfluenzaPigs, ducksPertussis (whooping cough)Pigs, dogs

The Legacy of the NeolithicLed to the diversification of cultures (not simply progress or improvement):

Some societies practiced horticulture = cultivation of crops carried out with simple hand tools such as digging sticks or hoes.

Others practiced agriculture = intensive farming of large plots of land, employing fertilizers, plows, and/or extensive irrigation.

Still others adopted pastoralism = a reliance on herds of domestic animals for their subsistence.