Chapter 4

Farmer Power

Agricultural Societies

• Agricultural societies produce more food and thus more people.

Meat

• Meat from livestock replaces wild meat, animals also provide power to pull plows and fertilizer.

Sedentary Existence

• Sedentary existence leads to shorter birth intervals for women (4 years for hunter-gatherers versus 2 years for agriculturalists), contributing to higher population densities

Specialists

• Food was stored allowing existence of non-food producing specialists:– kings– bureaucrats– soldiers– priests– artisans.

Fiber

• Crops and livestock provide natural fibers for:– clothes– blankets– nets– rope

Big Animals

• Big animals provided transport by riding:– horse– donkey– yak – reindeer – camels

Animal Utility

• Horse, donkey, yak, reindeer, camels plus the llama also used to bear packs.

• Cows and horses were hitched to wagons

• Reindeer and dogs pulled sleds.

Horses

• Horses were the most potent military technology of ancient warfare on the Eurasian continent.

Germs• Germs evolved in human societies with

domestic animals: smallpox, measles, flu are derived from animals.

Chapter 5

History's Haves and Have-nots

Unequal Conflicts

"Much of human history has consisted of unequal conflicts between the haves and the have-nots: between peoples with farmer power and those without it, or between those who acquired it at different times."

Crop Domestication

• Agricultural production originated independently in only a few places in the world at widely different times.

Crop Domestication

• Every other place got it as a cultural package of both domesticated plants and animals.

• Can trace by archeology where a crop was domesticated.

• Clues include finding wild varieties growing nearby.

Teosinte

Often areas of most intense production are not where domestic crops originated.

Global Potato Production

Where Crops were Domesticated

• Five areas where crops were domesticated independently are:

• Southwest Asia (Middle East): – wheat, pea, olive

Where Crops were Domesticated

• China: Rice, Millet

Where Crops were Domesticated

• Mesoamerica: corn, beans, squash

Where Crops were Domesticated

• Andes: potato

Where Crops were Domesticated

• E. USA: sunflower

Other Domesticated Crops

• Other crops were domesticated in other places probably after domestic crops arrived from these five centers, and people were already committed to farming.

Adoption by Hunter-Gatherers

• Sometimes arrival of domesticated plants and animals were adopted by hunters/gatherers– Egypt– Atlantic coast of Europe– South Africa– Native Americans in U.S.

Displacement of Hunter-Gatherers• Sometimes hunters/gatherers were displaced by

agriculturalists – South China expansion into Philippines and Indonesia– Bantu expansion over subequatorial Africa– European expansion into

• California • Pacific Northwest • Argentine pampas• Australia• Siberia

Bantu Expansion

Head Start

"The peoples of areas with a head start on food production thereby gained a head start on the path leading to guns, germs and steel. The result was a long series of collisions between the haves and have-nots of history."

Chapter 6

To Farm or Not to Farm

Food Production• Food production often led to

– poorer health– shorter lifespan– harder labor for the majority of people.

Adoption of Agriculture

• Adoption of agriculture was not a discovery of food production nor an invention.

• It was a process of cultural evolution.

Evolution of Agriculture

• Without having seen an agricultural society, how could first people who adopted agriculture have consciously chosen it?

• Food production evolved as a by-product of decisions made without awareness of their consequences.

Piecemeal Adoption of Agriculture

• Many hunters and gatherers adopted some agricultural practices or sedentary life while continuing hunting and gathering:

– Pacific Northwest Native Americans.

Piecemeal Adoption of Agriculture

• Also, many agriculturalists are nomadic, and many hunters/gatherers manage the land they live on.

Piecemeal Adoption of Agriculture

• Agriculture was often adopted piecemeal as it became desirable.

Factors in Adoption of Agriculture

• Relative decline in availability of wild foods. – As human populations

grew and animal populations shrunk, agriculture became desirable

Factors in Adoption of Agriculture

• Climatic changes after last ice age increased range of domesticable plants.

Factors in Adoption of Agriculture

• cumulative development of technologies for harvesting and storing wild foods facilitated agricultural life– sickles– baskets– roasting techniques– mortars and pestles.

Factors in Adoption of Agriculture

• Autocatalytic rise in human population with agriculture, and agriculture with human population. – Population was rising

due to increased technology and thus demanded agriculture.

– Agriculture itself results in ever increased populations.

Factors in Adoption of Agriculture

• At boundary of agriculturalists and hunter-gatherers, denser population of agriculturalists allowed displacement or killing off of hunter-gatherers.

• Where there were only hunter gatherers, those who adopted agriculture outbred and displaced or killed off those who didn't.

Hunters of the World

20th Century Hunter-Gatherers

"Those few peoples who remained hunter-gathers into the 20th century escaped replacement by food producers because they were confined to areas not fit for food production, especially deserts and Arctic regions."