Origins of Food Production and Settled Life
Shift from big game hunting, and hunter gathering, to stationary food sources –
fish, shellfish, small game and wild plants
Exploitation of local relatively permanent resources means an increasingly settled way of life.
Called Epipaleolithic in Near East
Mesiolithic in Europe
Archaic in Mesoamerica it is a switch to broad-spectrum food-collecting
1st clear evidence of the change to food production is in the Near East in 8000 bc
Called the Neolithic revolution it occurs, independently in other areas of the Old and New World within the next few thousand years.
China, Southeast Asia and Africa 6000 BC
New World – highlands of Mesoamerica 7000 bc
eastern Woodlands of NA at 2000 bc (or even earlier)
Most of the world’s major food plants and animals were domesticated well before 2000 bc – developed by that time were techniques of plowing, fertilizing, fallowing and irrigation.
Evolution of Domestication
Sedentarism – how and why people in different places may have come to cultivate and domesticate plants and animals and to live in permanent villages.
Agriculture – all kinds of domestic plant cultivation,
Domestication — the altering of plants to meet the needs of the cultivators.
In many cases there were sedentary settlements before the development of agriculture, and patterns were different in different parts of the world
Preagricultural Developments
The Near East – wheat and barley grow wild in this region. Theory is that using their flint blade sickles people could easily accumulate a vast amount of cereal grains that would sustain them for a long period of time. It is impossible to carry that around and that may have brought on more sedentary lifestyles from formerly hunter/gatherers who followed game and the seasonal vegetable and plant cycles. Tools to process and cook this bounty would have also been tough to port about.
grinders, roasters – storage pits – the beginnings of solid permanent housing.
People who had worked to build these good shelters would have been reluctant to abandon them.
Archeological evidence shows that earliest preagricultural settlements clustered around naturally rich regions.
Near East climate was stable and there was little variation in the terrain –
Natufians of the Near East – harvested wild grain intensively, stored the surplus in stone walled houses, in plastered storage pits – but remains of many animals tells us they still supplemented their diet with wild animals, especially gazelle. – evidence of social complexity — larger sites, bigger houses occupied for most of the year.
Down side – tooth enamel reflects nutritional stress and declining stature – signs of malnutrition, so it didn’t always work.
MESOAMERICA
Shift to broad spectrum hunting and gathering occurred in the New World at the end of the Paleo-Indian period 10kya
Climate change followed the glacial retreat, warmer and wetter, changes plant and animal communities throughout NA and Mesoamerica.
Megafauna and smaller game all went extinct in a short period of time
Decidous forests, woodlands and grasslands expanded – a range of new plants to exploit
Ground stone woodworking tools such as axes and adzes, nutprocessing tools such as mortars and pestles.
Shellfish used as food and decoration – expansion of the range of plants and animals to be relied on.
Variation in terrain meant that these populations had a broader range of resources – different plants and animals live at different levels in the mountain terrain and plains, vertical zonation means that a wide range of resources were available close by.
Cactus and succulents in the grasslands, oak and pine forests nearby — vast variation.
8000 k ya Macro band camps/ micro band camps where people travelled seasonally — depending on use and resources
No evidence of social differences among the Archaic peoples of the Highlands of Mesoamerica, probably informal – little evidence of ritual behavior – dance plaza – but mainly preserved the egalitarian structure of preagriculture Europe.
Southeast Asia — some evidence that climate change pushed the expanding use of resources, fairly early on. The archeological research in this area is only beginning
Africa – Sahara region was full of lakes, rivers, streams and provided a wide variety of fish, hippopotamus and crocodiles. Sedentarism is found in the Western Desert of Egypt between 9 k ya and 8.5k ya, in stone huts on the shores of rivers and lakes
provided a steady, year round source of food
WHY DID BROAD-SPECTRUM COLLECTING DEVELOP?
The preagricultural switch to broad-spectrum collecting was fairly common throughout the world.
The common denominators:
climate change partly responsible for the exploitation of new sources of food, worldwide rise in sea levels increased availability of fish and shellfish, reduction in big game and herd animals.
human activity – overkilling may also be the cause
bird extinctions and mammal extinctions were simultaneous – climatic and other environmental changes? overkill? or large animals take longer to reproduce and may be more sensitive to adult mortality and not replace population quickly enough — Moa in New Zealand.
population increase – hunter gatherers were filling up the world and may have been forced to seek new, possibly less desirable sources of food, and H/gs moved into new uninhabited parts of the world – Australia the New World.
Broad spectrum collecting does not necessarily mean that people were eating better. The general decline in stature associated with this era — poorer diet. Height declined by as much as two inches – malnutrition or natural selection did not require size and strength with the shift away from big game hunting.
Other areas of the world – Australia and the central US skeletal evidence – decline in general health in associated with the rise of broad spectrum collecting.
BROAD SPECTRUM COLLECTING AND SEDENTARISM
In some parts of the world (Europe, Near East, Africa) this shift meant permanent settlements, in other areas (Mesoamerica) cultivation of plants did not cause increased permanent settlement. Instead a series of temporary settlements allowed for a use of a wide variety of resources.
Sedentarism may be a result of the high reliability and yield of the broad-spectrum resources rather than the broad spectrum itself.
SEDENTARISM AND POPULATION GROWTH
Settling down of a nomadic growth may reduce the typical spacing between births, noting the Nomadic !Kung birth pattern
Deliberate spacing – hard to carry more than one small child when nomadic – easier to have small kids when not moving around
post-partum sex taboo, deliberate contraception, infanticide
Nomadic moms rely on nursing to feed kids until 2 or 3 years old – available cereal to agument feeding may be less strenuous, ovulation may return sooner
Ratio of body fat to body weight – increased body fat may aid ovulation, lack of same may suppress ovulation.
MICROLITHIC TECH –
Smaller lighter tools, stone and wood, composite tools, could be repaired easily, sickles.
since they don’t need the large nodules to make large core and flake tools people using microliths could work with smaller nodules to make smaller blades.
DOMESTICATION OF PLANTS AND ANIMALS –
Neolithic – new stone age, defined be the presence of domesticated plants and animals. A culture where people began to actively produce food and not merely collect it.
Archeologically we don’t see the beginning of plant production or animal husbandry, we see the effects of differences from the wild varieties. Planting crops is cultivation, plants produced from cultivation, different from their wild cousins are called cultivars. When plants are cultivated and modified from the wild variety they are domesticated.
Barley – rachis –(ray kis) the seed bearing part of the stem of barley shows this shift in domestication
wild barley has a fragile rachis – easier to spread seeds and perpetuate the species (natural selection) — and a tough stem
domesticated barley has a tough rachis, and a fragile stem – easier to harvest, stays together longer for processing – the seed shells are brittle and easy to separate from the grains.
intentional alteration or accidental through harvesting – only the tougher rachis would survive for seed stock, planting, harvesting and perpetuation as cultivated food.
domesticated animals may have more intentional characteristics – wild goats in the near east have different shaped horns than the domestic varieties – preference of the human breeders? Imbalances in sex and age of a population as evidenced in the archeological record may also show that domestication has occurred.
DOMESTICATION IN THE NEAR EAST P. 165
For a long time archeologists have believed that the Fertile Crescent was the earliest centers of plant and animal domestication – 10,000 y.a — wheat, oats, rye, barley, lentils, peas, various fruits and nuts ( apricots, pears, pomegranates, dates, figs, olives, almonds and pistaschios) . Dogs appear to have been domesticated before the rise of agriculture 12,000 y.a , goats and sheep 9kya, cattle and pigs 8kya.
Ali Kosh – Iran – highly stratified site occupied over a long period….good for tracking changes in a population
9500 ya – wild plants and animals
7500 ya – agriculture and herding
after 7500 ya – irrigation and use of domesticated cattle stimulates a minor population explosion
9500 ya to 8750 ya lived in small mud brick homes – rooms 7 X 10, evidence of seasonal relocation in summer, perhaps to graze goats in mountain valleys nearby with better grass.
food – ate a lot of cultivated emmer wheat and barley, goat meat.
no wild goats in the area so must be domesticated – no elderly goat bones, no large horn cores so males were not generally allowed to age – indicates domestic animals rather than hunted – females kept for milking and breeding
evidence also indicated a dependence on wild foods (legumes, and grasses), and hunting, (gazelles, wild oxen and wild pigs) and some fishing – carp, catfish, shellfish and mussels, as well as waterfowl (ducks, geese) seasonally
flint tools in the early years are varied and abundant 10s of Ks of blades only a few mm wide. 1% of stone found was obsidian from eastern Turkey – a considerable distance – indicating a trade relationship with people in that area. the cultivar emmer wheat was not native in the area either, and must have also arrived by trade relationships.
8750 ya to 8000ya – increased reliance on cultivated food plants – 40% of found seed in hearths and kitchen middens is emmer wheat and barley. less evidence of wild plants, maybe because of increased plant production, maybe overgrazing of goats reduced wild plant populations.
the village is no larger but the individual houses have larger rooms (10 X10) – plastered on the interior with mud, covered with rush or reed mats (imprinted on the walls) and often having courtyards with ovens and roasting pits.
village population at this time approx 100 individuals – but evidence of extensive trading network – shells from the Persian Gulf to the south, copper from central Iran, obsidian from eastern Turkey, turquoise from the border between Iran and Afghanistan. Much of this was used for ornaments for both sexes – burial goods – burials under the floors of houses.
After 7500 ya – evidence of a much larger population – supported by irrigation, plows, cattle. in the next thousand years 6500 ya this population growth is evident through the region and culminated in rise of urban civilizations in the Near East (see Ch 11)
Ali Kosh may have been able to sustain population growth in the immediate area but other settlements were not so lucky due to the environment around the area which was not conducive to the type of agricultural activity necessary to support increased population..
CATAL HUYUK – in mountainous southern Turkey – also a mud brick town
7600 ya an adobe town also continuously occupied for a long period – 200 houses in pueblo fashion (flat roofed, multifamily dwellings) decorated with murals and evidence of shrines with religious scenes and everyday events. Layer of these murals. some rooms indicate use as shrines, bull figurines and full-sized heads of cattle on the walls. other themes are life and death painted red and black., clay statuettes of pregnant women and bearded men on bulls
advanced farming here – lentils, wheat, barley and peas grown in quantity – suggesting surplus. richly varied handcrafts carved wooden bowls, and boxes, obsidian and flijnt daggers, spearheads, lance heads, scrapers, awls and sickle blades. also bowls, spatulas, knives, ladles, and spoons craved from bone, shell and copper. obsidian mirrors.
since this is an area of few raw materials it is likely that Catal Huyukians traded excess food produced for these goods since the materials to make all of these items came from a considerable distance away.
DOMESTICATION IN MESOAMERICA – P. 168
A different pattern for domestication is seen here. Semi-nomadic hunting and gathering lifestyle is extended long past the domestication of plants.
Unlike Europe people here sowed crops but did not stay to tend and protect them, returning to harvest them in season.
Most were not basic to survival but were desirable additions to the basic diet.
EX: Bottle gourds, sown everywhere so they were readily available to transport water.
Others—tomatoes, cotton, a variety of beans and squashes, and maize / corn (very different from modern forms) teosinte is the ancestor of maize?
Domestication probably occurred through manipulation of wild forms, planting larger fruited beans in close proximity to living areas. Mixing squash varieties to cross-pollinate to see what would result.
Mesoamericans were the first to plant several crops together in the same field. Corn, beans and squash – soil nutrient advantages, cultivation advantages, amino acid combinations, — may have been copying the natural occurrence of these plants together in nature.
Guila Naqutiz—above the valley of Oaxaca in Mexico – evidence of a intermittent occupation of hunter gatherers – 10,900 YA TO 8700 ya
peccary, and rabbits, collected foods like cherries, acorns, pinon nuts, agave hearts, onions etc, but also evidence of bottle gourds, and squashes
domesticated plants but clearly on a more informal basis – not a revolution that replaced traditional food collecting methods.
DOMESTICATION ELSEWHERE IN THE WORLD
Two points of independent domestication of plants –
South America and eastern U.S.
First plants to be domesticated were bottle gourds and some squashes (9500 ya)
in addition to these
more than 200 domesticated plants to the Andes – potatoes, lima beans, peanuts, amaranth and quinona the first clear domesticate being the
chili pepper from 9300 ya – about the same as in Mesoamerica
root crops such as manioc and sweet potatoes probably came from
lowland tropical forest regions of S. America
Many plants found in NAM came from Mesoamerica – corn , beans , squash
although sunflowers, sumpweed and goosefoot were developed earlier as food crops – probably from around Kentucky and southern Illinois, Tennessee around 4000 ya – corn makes it to this area about 200 AD
since precorn cultivates are superior traditionally to corn why does corn become the dominate crop?
possibly higher yields, possibly that harvest of the other crops happened in the fall when deer hunting was necessary for winter – other crops were harder to harvest and process, corn ripened earlier, was easy to collect, store and use
main domesticated animals in the New World — dogs and turkeys.
turkeys were domesticated early – feathers for ornaments, bones for tools but not necessarily for food in the pueblo regions (further south in Mexico they become an important food source – the Spanish found an abundance of them in 1519 – may have been independently done?
Central Andes – llamas and alpacas were used for meat, transportation, wool as early as 7000 ya, and guinea pigs (rodents) were a food source before domestication, then raised within people’s dwellings
extinction of the megafauna meant the New World had no wild cattle or horses or other large animals to domesticate
EAST ASIA – seed crops are better known and understood because soft flesh plants do not preserve well –
cereal cultivation in China 8000 ya, millet
still evidence of hunting and fishing to suggest that people depended also on these – domesticated pigs and dogs
South China –
rice, bottlegourds, water chestnuts, jujube (dates sort of). water buffalo, pigs and dogs
and hunting
Earliest found doms in SE Asia – 11500 ya in Spirit Cave – betel leaf, water chestnuts
cultivation in the plains and terraces around rivers. Fish and shellfish
Bamboo may have been cultivated as a building and tool material
Evidence of rice in Thailand 6000ya – root crops taro and yams, and breadfruit, coconuts and bananas.
Africa – farming was widespread in the Northern half of Africa after 8000 ya. Evidence that most of the domesticated plants and animals came from the Near East – some local wild varieties, but most domesticated plants reflect varieties from elsewhere.
WHY DID FOOD PRODUCTION DEVELOP?
Domestication of plants and animals brought about the economic transformation in widely separate parts of the world around 10 kya
Why did it occur?
Many theories: (of course) most revolve around the origin of domestication in the Fertile Crescent area
Gordon Childe – 1950s theory: drastic climate change brought about domestication in the Near East reduced rainfall in this postglacial period – Near East and Africa forced people to retreat into shrinking pockets of food resources surrounded by deserts. Oasis theory – fewer available wild resources gave people incentive to search for alternatives and begin deliberate cultivation of crops and domestication of animals.
Braidwood and Willey – 1) climate change was not as dramatic as Childe claimed;
2) climatic changes that occurred in the Near East before in
interglacial periods without a food producing revolution
3) people only began to domesticate plants and animals
when they were culturally ready to achieve it, after they learned enough about their environment to adapt it
Binford and Flannery — some change in external circumstances must have induced or
favored the changeover to food production
no evidence for economic incentive – h/g is actually less work
population increases may have forced people to more marginal
areas with fewer wild resources and domestication may have been an attempt to replicate the natural bounty of the areas they had been pushed out of
There is archeological evidence that population increase did proceed the advent of domestication in some areas (Levant, SW Fertile Crescent), but not in all (SW Iran)
Mark Cohen – not small area population increases but worldwide gradual population increase meant that the world was filled with H/gers — no place (fewer uninhabited areas) to go to relieve population pressures – more people meant that people were living in less desirable areas and exploiting a broader range of less desirable wild foods.
so – either more broad spectrum collecting OR targeted increase of foods though cultivation of desirable wild plants at first by weeding and warding off animal pests, eventually planting the most desirable wild foods – cultivation becomes the most efficient way to allow more people to live in one place.
Recently archeologists have returned to the idea of climate change –
summers in 13,000 – 12,000 Near EASt hotter and drier, winters colder climate change that favors emergence of seasonal wild grains – archeologically proven to be profligate in the Near East – Natufians intensively exploited these grains, developing technology around the storage and processing of the wild grains – giving up their previous nomadic lifestyle to support this management of resources.
did the sedetarism of the Natufians bring on the population increase that led to a scarcity of wild resources in an area where wild resources were previously abundant and easily available? was agriculture the answer to a population in permanent settlements who could no longer count on natural abundance to be enough?
More seasonal climate may have also reduced available wild resources in colder weather, or dry periods. Wild game may have become lean and less nutritious in those periods, and increased carbohydrates and fats from food cultivated intentionally, and may have been necessary to supplement traditional food gathering activities – warding off starvation.
Mesoamerica is a different picture because early domesticates were not critical to subsistence. Climate change was not significant, Population pressure and nutrient shortages don’t fit this model. Cultivation seemed to be a way to expand availability of desirable and useful plants. Domestication of maize seems to not be a necessary food stuff but instead a food staple people liked, so they grew large quantities of – and over time became a dietary mainstay.
CONSEQUENCES OF THE RISE OF FOOD PRODUCTION
1) Accelerated population growth, fertility increases (remember the !Kung bushman analysis – it all applies here) Children were also useful in farming and herding economies, and therefor more valued for farm work and as caregivers for younger children while women helped in food production activities. Even in modern communities that rely on farming and herding fertility rates tend to be high.
2) Declining health – again bone and teeth are used to analyze the health of these populations – incomplete development of tooth enamel, natural (as opposed to accident caused) bone lesions, reduction in stature, decreased average lifespan. Many studied prehistoric populations relying on agriculture show less adequate nutrition, and higher infection rates than pre-ag populations in the same regions.
Why is unclear – overreliance on a few sources of food may reduce nutrient variety
famine and crop failure may plague a population – drought, plant disease. Or social and political factors may limit distribution of and access to within a population.
3. Elaboration of Material Possessions – because more permanent villages were established after the advent of agriculture there was an opportunity to construct more elaborate and comfortable dwellings. Most architecture in these communities is reflective of the building materials at hand in the region – mud brick in the Near East, timber houses in the Alps and along major rivers like the Danube, bubble shaped dwellings on Cyprus that resembled beehives.
In Neolithic times the presence of longhouses meant extended family groups lived under the same roof with areas for individual family units – furniture much like modern furniture – tables, chairs, beds and doors, even evidence of padded and upholstered couches and chairs – evidence that people who were staying in one place could take the time and make the tools to create elaborate household goods.
the emergence of woven textiles – wool cotton linen (flax) domesticated and intentionally produced for the making of cloth. Neolithic people developed the loom and spindle for weaving cloth
pottery – large vessels for storing grains and mugs and plates and bowls, cooking pots, dishes – later glazed to improve their liquid retention and then for the ornamentation that glaze and fine graceful forms could provide
none of this was likely in a nomadic culture – too hard to tote these things around, some items were fragile – settled life would be required to maintain these possessions, and these possessions would make life more comfortable and efficient.
Evidence of long distance trade means that ornamentation is more precious when made with rarer materials – obsidian is traded over long distances, ornamental stone such as marble is found far from its original sources, seashells are found far inland used for their ornamental qualities.
Cities, large urban civilized (meaning, literally citified) areas begin to appear about 5500 ya in the Near East – with political assemblies, kings, scribes, and specialized workshops producing finely crafted goods – these were supported by surrounding farming villages which supplied these urban centers with produce and animal products.
Urban societies appear first in the Near East and later around the eastern Mediterranean, the Indus Valley of India, northern China, and in the New World in Mexico and Peru.
population chart on p. 176 Embers– reflects the radical growth of humans after the advent of herding and farming.