Appreciating Human Diversity

Fifteenth Edition

Conrad Phillip Kottak

University of Michigan

A n t h r o p o l o g y

McGraw-Hill © 2013 McGraw-Hill Companies. All Rights Reserved.

11-2

THE FIRST FARMERS

C H A P T E R

11-2

11-3

THE FIRST FARMERS

• The Mesolithic

• The Neolithic

• The First Farmers and Herders in the

Middle East

• Other Old World Food Producers

• The First American Farmers

• Explaining the Neolithic

• Costs and Benefits

11-4

THE FIRST FARMERS

• When and where did the Neolithic originate,

and what were its main features?

• What similarities and differences marked the

Neolithic economies of the Old World and the

New World?

• What costs and benefits are associated with

food production?

11-5

THE FIRST FARMERSUnderstanding Ourselves

• Broad spectrum revolution: 15,000 B.P. in

Middle East and 12,000 B.P. in Europe

• Broader spectrum of plant and animal life hunted,

gathered, collected, caught, and fished

• Revolutionary b/c in Middle East, led to food

production—human control over the reproduction

of plants and animals

11-6

THE MESOLITHIC

• Paleolithic:

• Lower (early) – H. erectus, Acheulean

• Middle – Archaic H. sapiens (Acheulean), including Neandertals of western Europe and

Middle East (Mousterian)

• Upper (late) - AMHs

• Mesolithic followed Upper Paleolithic

• With glacial retreat, the prey changed (i.e. deer, ox, pig…not herd species)

• New hunting techniques

• Solitary stalking and trapping

• Tools tell us about the economy and way of life

• New Tools - Microliths: small stone tools typical of Mesolithic technology as hunting became

solitary

• Fishhooks

• Harpoon tips

• Dart tips

• Dugout canoes

The Mesolithic

• New kinds of axes, chisels, and gouges (wood-

working, leather-working, & carpentry)

• Preserved fish by smoking and salting

• Bow and arrow used for hunting water fowl in

swamps and marshes

• Dogs used as retrievers

• Domesticated much earlier

• Domesticated world-wide

11-7

11-8

THE MESOLITHIC

• Technology reflects shift from focus on herd game hunting to more

varied and specialized activities

• Middle Easterners started to cultivate plants

and breed animals by 10,000 B.P.

• Western Europe enters food production and herding around

5000 B.P.

• Generalized, broad-spectrum economies persisted about 5,000

years longer in Europe

• Around 15,000 B.P., as big-game supply dwindled, foragers had to

look for new resources

• Attention shifted from large-bodied , slow reproducers (i.e.

mammoths) to species such as fish, mollusks, and rabbits

(reproduce quickly)

11-9

THE NEOLITHIC

• Neolithic: originally referred to new techniques of grinding and polishing stone tools;

describes economies based on food production; farming and herding; Agricultural

Revolution

• First signs of domestication (plants and animals)

• Intervention into reproductive cycles of plants and animals by modifying

biological characteristics

• The transition to Neolithic occurred as groups became dependent on

domesticated foods

• More than 50% of food comes from domesticates

• New economy – from foraging to farming and herding

• Revolutionary – after millions of years of foraging, in just a few thousand years,

the new economy of farming and herding would transform small mobile groups

into societies living in permanent settlements (i.e. villages,

towns,…………….cities)

• More reliable economy fueled population growth and expansion, as well as

settlement of new environments

• Shift under way in Middle East by 12,000 B.P.

11-10

THE NEOLITHIC

• During the era of increased specialization in

food production (7500 to 5500 B.P.), new

crops were added to the diet, along with more

productive varieties of wheat and barley

11-11

RECAP 11.1: The Transition to Food Production in the Middle East

11-12

The first farmers and herders in the Middle East

• By 10,000 B.P., domesticated plants and

animals were part of a broad spectrum of

resources used by Middle Easterners

• By 7500 B.P. Middle Easterners moved toward

more specialized economies based on fewer

species, which were domesticates

• They were now committed herders and

farmers

The first farmers and herders in the Middle East

• Kent Flannery – produced series of eras during which Middle Eastern

transition to farming and herding took place

• Era of seminomadic hunting and gathering (12,000 – 10,000 B.P. ) –

last stages of broad spectrum foraging

• Era of dry farming (wheat and barley) and caprine domestication

(10,000 – 7500 B.P.) :

• Dry farming – dependent upon rainfall; no irrigation

• Caprine domestication – goats and sheep

• Era of increased specialization in food production (7500 – 5500 B.P.) –

new crops added to diet; more productive varieties of wheat and barley;

cattle and pigs were domesticated

• By 5500 B.P., agriculture was in communities along alluvial plain of the

Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which would produce the first cities,

metallurgy, and the wheel

11-13

11-14

THE FIRST FARMERS AND HERDERS IN THE MIDDLE EAST

• Middle Eastern food production arose in

context of four environmental zones

• High plateau (5,000 feet) (highest)

• Hilly flanks: a subtropical woodland zone that

flanks rivers to the north

• Piedmont steppe: a treeless plain

• Alluvial desert: watered by Tigris and Euphrates

rivers (lowest)

11-15

THE FIRST FARMERS AND HERDERS IN THE MIDDLE EAST

• It was once thought that food production began in oases in the alluvial

desert

• Not started there because dry climate required irrigation (not invented

yet)

• Braidwood: proposed that food production started in Hilly Flanks

• Subtropical woodland zone was where wheat and barley would have

been most abundant

• Deliberate cultivation most likely came in response to climatic changes

• Caused habitual harvesting of wild grains

• Abundance led to first sedentary villages

• Binford: certain areas of Middle East were so rich in resources that

foragers could adopt sedentism—sedentary (settled) life in villages

The First Farmers and Herders in the Middle East

• The Natufians

• Collected wild game and hunted gazelles

• Year round villages/sedentism – could harvest wild cereals for six months (plenty

of food)

• Climate

• Just before Natufian period, it became warmer and more humid

• Expanded altitude range of wild wheat and barley; more areas for foraging

• Spring – wheat and barley ripened at low altitudes

• Summer – middle altitudes

• Fall – high altitudes

• Longer harvest season

• Around 11,000 B.P. – shift to drier conditions

• Now they are restricted to areas with permanent water

• Transferred wild cereals to well-watered areas

• Deliberate cultivation began in response to documented climate changes

11-16

11-17

THE FIRST FARMERS AND HERDERS IN THE MIDDLE EAST

• 11,000 B.P. - Climate change toward warmer, more humid conditions just

before Natufian period

• Natufians tried to maintain productivity by transferring wild cereals to

well-watered areas

• Inhabitants in marginal areas (areas outside of abundant food zones),

like piedmont steppe, began to copy dense strands of wheat and barley

that grew in optimal zones (abundant food areas) such as hilly flanks

• People most likely to adopt new subsistence strategy (i.e. cultivation)

would be those having most trouble following traditional subsistence

strategy (marginal areas)

• Some areas were so rich in resources that forager could adopt

sedentism (without cultivation)

• People in optimal area would have no reason to invent cultivation when

wild grain was ample

11-18

THE FIRST FARMERS AND HERDERS IN THE MIDDLE EAST

• Sedentary village life developed before farming and herding in the

Middle East

• Natufian settlements (hilly flanks), occupied year round, show

permanent architectural features and evidence for processing

and storage of wild grains (needed a place to store grain; cannot

be nomadic anymore)

• Sheep and goats grazed on stubble after grain was harvested

• Plants and animals available in same area – favored village life

11-19

THE FIRST FARMERS AND HERDERS IN THE MIDDLE EAST

• The Middle East had a vertical economy

• Exploited environmental zones that were close but contrasted with one

another in altitude, rainfall, overall climate, and vegetation

• Juxtaposition of varied environments allowed broad spectrum foragers

to use different resources (hunting, foraging, harvesting) in different

seasons

• Early semi-nomadic foragers followed game from zone to zone

• Different zones had different resources

• Movement of people, animals, and products between zones was

precondition for the emergence of food production

• As grains moved outside their original zones, they were subjected to

different selective pressures which resulted in different strains that were

more suited for different environments

11-20

Figure 11.1: The Vertical Economy of the Ancient Middle East

11-21

GENETIC CHANGES AND DOMESTICATION

• Cultivated beans have pods that hold

together rather than shattering as they do in

the wild

• Grains of wheat, barley, and other cereals

occur in bunches at the end of a stalk

• Wild grains, the axis (stem connecting seed to

the stalk) is brittle

• Humans selected grains in which the axis was

tougher, allowing less grain to fall to the ground,

thus raising yields

11-22

GENETIC CHANGES AND DOMESTICATION

• Humans also selected plants that were more

easily husked

• Selected woolly sheep that were better suited to

lowland heat, as well as to obtain wool

• Plants got larger with domestication, while

animals got smaller (probably bc they are easier

to control)

• Domestication was ongoing process as people

refined and changed traits to more favorable ones

11-23

Figure 11.2: A Head of Wheat or Barley

Food Production and the State

• The early stages of food production in the Middle East formed part of a gradual

transition from foraging to producing economies;

• domesticated plants and animals began as minor parts of a broad-spectrum

economy.

• Foraging still continued (for fruits, nuts, grasses, grains, snails, and insects).

• Through food production (crops and herds):

• former marginal zones became centers of the new economy and of population

increase and emigration.

• People eventually intensified production by cultivating in the hilly flanks, as wild

yields were no longer sufficient for the increasing population. So in the hilly

flanks, farming replaced foraging as the economic mainstay.

• Farming colonies spread down into drier areas. In the Tigris–Euphrates alluvial

desert plain (Mesopotamia), cultivation required irrigation, which began around

7000 B.P.

• By 6000 B.P., irrigation systems had become far larger and more complex and were

associated with a new political system, the state, based on a central government,

extreme contrasts of wealth, and social classes.

11-24

11-25

OTHER OLD WORLD FOOD PRODUCERS

• The path from foraging

to food production happened

independently in at least

seven world areas:

• Three in the Americas

• Four in the Old World

• Food production spread through

trade, diffusion, and migration

11-26

THE AFRICAN NEOLITHIC

• Considerable complexity in southern Egypt’s

Neolithic economy and social system

• 12,000 B.P., Nabta Playa occupied

• Early evidence of “African cattle complex”

• 9000 B.P., people at Nabta year-round.

• 7500 B.P., new settlers occupied Nabta after a

major drought

• Brought a more sophisticated social and

ceremonial system

11-27

THE NEOLITHIC IN EUROPE AND ASIA

• 8000 B.P., communities on Europe’s

Mediterranean shores shifting from foraging

to farming

• 6000 B.P., thousands of farming villages

grew up, from Russia to northern France

• Domestication and Neolithic economies

spread rapidly across Eurasia

11-28

THE NEOLITHIC IN EUROPE AND ASIA

• 8000 B.P., domesticated goats, sheep,

cattle, wheat, and barley present in Pakistan

• China became one of the first world areas to

develop farming, based on millet and rice

• Discoveries suggest that rice domesticated

in the Yangtze River Valley as early as

8400 B.P.

11-29

Figure 11.3: Seven World Areas Where Food Production Was Independently Invented

11-30

RECAP 11.2: Seven World Areas Where Food Production Was Independently Invented

11-31

THE FIRST AMERICAN FARMERS

• The most significant contrast between Old and New World food production involved

animal domestication

• Foraging focused on big game was widely successful in N. America later than in

Europe bc abundance of game

• Allowed foragers to gradually occupy the Americas

• Learned to cope with great diversity of environments

• Domesticated animals not as important to the economy of New World

• Large game animals were not domesticated in the New World (largest

animal – llama)

• No cattle, sheep, goats, ox, horse…

• No wheel (or beasts of burden to pull carts or plows)

• Three caloric staples domesticated by Native American farmers:

• Maize: corn

• Potatoes

• Manioc: cassava

• Beans and squash were important but not the staple crops

11-32

THE FIRST AMERICAN FARMERS

• Food production independently invented

in at least three areas of the Americas:

• Mesoamerica

• Eastern U.S.

• South-central Andes

• By 4500 B.P., eastern U.S. had domesticated goosefoot, marsh elder,

sunflower, and squash. These crops were supplemented by a diet based

mainly on hunting and gathering. They did not have the caloric staples like

other areas.

• Eventually maize diffused into the U.S., reaching both Southwest and

Eastern portions

• Maize provided a more reliable caloric staple for N. American farming

11-33

THE TROPICAL ORIGINS OF NEW WORLD DOMESTICATION

• New World farming began in the lowlands of

South America and spread to Central

America, Mexico, and Caribbean islands

• Peruvian squash seeds date back 10,000 years

• 9000 and 8000 B.P., farmers selected desirable

characteristics in cultivated plants

• 7,000 years ago: farmers expanded their plots

into the nearby forests

11-34

THE TROPICAL ORIGINS OF NEW WORLD DOMESTICATION

• Maize domestication took place in lowlands

of southwest Mexico

• Teosinte: the wild ancestor of maize

• Maize cultivation spread to tropical Mexican Gulf

Coast by 7300 B.P.

11-35

THE MEXICAN HIGHLANDS

• Before farming, highlanders hunted as part of

broad spectrum foraging:

• Small animals more important than big game

• Oaxacans hunted and gathered in fall/winter

• Came together in late spring to harvest seasonally

available plants

• By 4000 B.P., a type of maize was available that

provided more food than mesquite pod

• By 3500 B.P., permanent village set up, based on

maize farming and simple irrigation

11-36

EXPLAINING THE NEOLITHIC

• Several factors converged for domestication:• Development of a full-fledged Neolithic economy required

settling down

• Sedentism became especially attractive when several species of

plants and animals were available locally (self-pollinating)

• Fertile Crescent had largest area with a Mediterranean climate,

and had the highest diversity of species

• Climate change, population growth, and the need to sustain life

in marginal ecological zones led to cultivation

Explaining the Neolithic

• People did not AUTOMATICALLY domesticate plants and animals once they had acquired

sufficient knowledge to do so.

• Foragers have an excellent knowledge of plants, animals, and their reproductive characteristics.

• Some other trigger is needed to start and sustain the process of domestication, like climate

change

• In North America, people domesticated some plant varieties, yet the local inventory of available

plants and animals was too meager, necessitating continued hunting and gathering,

• A full Neolithic economy and sedentism did not develop in the east, southeast, or southwest

regions of the United States until maize diffused in from Mesoamerica, more than 3,000 years

after the first domestication in the eastern United States.

• Most large animal species had not been domesticated. The species that had been domesticated

originally lived in hierarchical herds, permitting humans to assume superior positions in the

hierarchy

• United States did not have sheep, goats, pigs, oxen, or horses; thus, the wheel was not a viable

transport option. Once the big five Eurasian animal domesticates (cow, sheep, goat, pig, horse)

were introduced, they spread rapidly.

11-37

11-38

GEOGRAPHY AND THESPREAD OF FOOD PRODUCTION

• The geography of the Old World facilitated a

diffusion of plants, animals, technology, and

information

• In Eurasia, plants and animals could spread more

easily east-west than north-south

• The spread of Middle Eastern crops southward

into Africa was eventually halted by climatic

contrasts

11-39

GEOGRAPHY AND THESPREAD OF FOOD PRODUCTION

• In what is now the United States, the

east-west spread of farming (southeast to

southwest) was slowed by dry climates of

Texas, southern great plains

• Lack of large animals suitable to

domestication also slowed Neolithic transition

in the Americas

11-40

Figure 11.4: Major Axes of the Continents

11-41

COSTS AND BENEFITS

Food production brought the advantages of:

• Sedentism – settling down

• More reliable crops that can sustain large populations

• Trade and commerce (by land and sea)

• New forms of political and social organization to manage expansion (chiefdoms,

states, empires…)

• Monumental architecture, arched masonry, and sculpture

• Writing

• Mathematics, weights, and measures

• Discovery and invention

• Spinning and weaving

• Pottery and brick-making, arched masonry

• Smelting and casting metals - metallurgy

• By 5500 B.P., Middle Easterners were living in vibrant cities

• Markets, streets, temples, and palaces

11-42

COSTS AND BENEFITS

• The new economy also brought hardship:

• Food producers

typically work harder

than foragers

• Herds, fields,

and irrigation

systems need care

• Producers have

more children (more child care demands)

11-43

COSTS AND BENEFITS

• Public health declines

• Diets become less varied / less nutritious

• Disease begins to spread more easily due to

sedentism and population density and close proximity

to animals (and their waste)

• Social inequality and poverty increase

• Slavery and other forms of human bondage

• Rise in crime, war, and human sacrifice

• The rate at which human beings degrade their

environments increases with food production

11-44

RECAP 11.3: The Benefits and Costs of Food Production (Compared with Foraging)