Hello, my name is Laura Maldonado and welcome to my blog! I am a third year anthropology major at UC Berkeley, and my current goal is to attend graduate school to further my studies in archaeological and physical anthropology.
This archaeological blog focuses on the origins and evolution of agriculture, and my goal is to illustrate the advantages and disadvantages of the animal and plant domestication that first began to appear around 12-10 thousand years ago. The appearance of agriculture severely affected humans, and changes to their diet, social organization, economy, ideologies, population sizes, etc. ensued.
Posted on Thursday, March 27, 2014 by Lauraustralopithecine
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*Note: Open image in separate tab to enlarge.
A humorous comic drawn by xiam47 depicting "Jimmy the Nomad" and his friend planting seeds to grow plants for food. Is this train of thought similar to those of the first prehistoric cultivators? It is thought that cultivation of plants first began when gatherers began to save seeds from the foods they ate and spread them across fields in order to grow more of their favorite foods. By cultivating plants, hunter gatherers began to have a reliable source of edible plants. They did not give up hunting and gathering entirely, but they cultivated plants to ensure food supply when prey became scarce.
Posted on Monday, March 24, 2014 by Lauraustralopithecine
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The Fertile Crescent from Source #1
It is frequently assumed that agriculture emerged in a single location and eventually spread across to the rest of the world; however, this simply isn't true. Nicholas Malinak proposes a three-part evolution of agriculture, which is the idea that agriculture developed independently in the Middle East, China, and Mesoamerica. There is no single factor (or factors) that resulted in the establishment of agriculture. Agriculture flourished in these three areas of the world due to specific yet different conditions that allowed agriculture to take place, and the change in climate conditions that ensued after the end of the Ice Age is an example. The climate change allowed for new temperate regions that humans can comfortably live in, which also allows stable environmental conditions for plants to grow under human care.
Beginning in the area of Mesopotamia, agriculture was easily established due to the fact that the "fertile crescent" provided an environment that would allow plant cultivation to thrive. This area has also earned itself the nickname "Cradle of civilization", as the establishment of agriculture allowed the earliest human civilizations to survive in this area, the earliest dating back to 10,000 BCE. The cities that appeared heavily relied on agriculture and animal domestication for their main source of subsistence. China experienced similar results, but the establishment of agriculture differed in Mesoamerica.
It took around 4,000 years longer for agriculture to appear in Mesoamerica than it took to be established in Mesopotamia and China. Malinak explains that this late appearance of agriculture is an explanation as to why Native Americans relied heavily on hunting and gathering, and the delay in agricultural societies caused the Native Americans to be seen as less advanced than Europeans "due to the delay in development of complex stratified societies," (Malinak).
I have complied a timeline that depicts important characteristics and events of the history of agriculture, such as the cultivation of particular plants and domestication of specific animals that occurred throughout time. If you would like to add to this list, please notify me in the comment section!
The History of Agriculture Timeline:
14-30000 BC:
Earliest known domestication of dogs; however, the areas where the domestication is still debated and unknown.
10-12000 BC:
Natufians in the Levant begin harvesting wild grasses.
Beginnings of agriculture in the Middle East.
World Population: 1-5 million.
9-10000 BC:
Domestication of wheat in the Fertile Crescent.
Storage and sowing of surplus grains began to take place.
Domestication of fig trees and emmer wheat in Near East.
Wild sheep flocks are managed in the Zagros mountains.
8-9000 BC:
Domestication of chickpeas in Antolia.
Domestication of eikhorn wheat and barley in Near East.
Domestication of potatoes in South America.
Domestication of rice in Asia.
Domestication of bottle gourd in Asia and Central America.
World Population: 8-10 million.
7-8000 BC:
Domestication of goats and sheep in the Middle East.
Cultivation of wheat, sesame, barley, and eggplant in Mehrgarh.
Long-distance trade in obsidian begins.
Domestication of rye in Europe.
Domestication of cattle and chicken in Mehrgarh, Pakistan.
Domestication of maize in Central America.
Agriculture had reached southern Europe with evidence of emmer and einkorn wheat, barley, sheep, goats, and pigs suggest that a food producing economy is adopted in Greece and the Aegean.
6-7000 BC:
First pottery in the Near East.
Domestication of chickens in South Asia.
Domestication of bread wheat in Near East.
Granary built in Mehrgarh for storage of excess food.
First copper smelting in Anatolia.
First irrigation.
First fortified settlement at Ugarit.
5-6000 BC:
Domestication of cotton in Southwest Asia.
Domestication of beans in Central America.
Irrigation and agriculture begin in earnest in Mesopotamia.
Hierarchical societies emerge in southeast Europe.
4-5000 BC:
Invention of the plow.
The Neolithic village of Banpo is inhabited.
Domestication of chili peppers in South America.
Domestication of watermelon in Near East.
Egyptians discover how to make bread using yeast.
First use of light wooden ploughs in Mesopotamia
3-4000 BC:
Domestication of horses in West Asia.
Domestication of silkworms in China.
Domestication of cotton in South America.
Domestication of honey bees in Near East or Western Asia.
Sugar produced in India.
Fermentation of dough, grain, and fruit juices is in practice.
Posted on Monday, March 24, 2014 by Lauraustralopithecine
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*Note: Open image in separate tab to enlarge.
Join the Neolithic Revolution! This humorous David Steinlicht comic provides a detailed list of the advantages and disadvantages of plant and animal domestication. As stated in my previous post, I must reiterate that the cultivation and domestication of plants and animals did not develop rapidly as the word "revolution" implies. The agriculturalist lifestyle was a gradual change that developed over thousands of years. With that being said, here is an excerpt from the comic:
Your KEYS to a BETTER LIFE!
Harness Plant Power!
Learn how the seeds you drop can become next fall's crop!
Use seed selection to make future plants more production and easier to harvest!
Preserve and store surpluses for hard times!
Invent new ways of preparing and cooking plant foods!
Put Animals To Work For You!
Learn which species are slow and submissive!
Use food and fences to keep them around!
Influence their choice of mates!
Breed the best and eat the rest!
Disclaimer:
Plant and animal domestication can lead to overpopulation, deforestation, erosion, flooding, desertification, materialism, diminished nutrition, cavities, and television. Caution advised.
Your results may vary.
The advantages and disadvantages of adopting an agriculturalist lifestyle are clearly stated in the comic; however, why exactly did prehistoric humans feel the need to change their lifestyles? Were they pushed into it due to lack of resources, or were they pulled into it by observing the beneficial aspects of agriculture?
Posted on Monday, March 24, 2014 by Lauraustralopithecine
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The Agricultural Revolution: Crash Course World History #1
This amusing and informative video provides a quick overview of the possible origins of agriculture, which is also referred to as "The Agricultural Revolution". However, it should be noted that agriculture did not develop rapidly, as the term "revolution" implies. Instead, it took over thousands of years to gradually develop and establish agriculture and the settled societies that came along with it. Hosted by John Green, this video investigates the effects of the transition from hunting and gathering to the domestication of plants and animals. According to the video, the origins of agriculture resulted from the need to eat more, which allowed humans to create permanent settlements and sustain large families and communities of people. However, hunter-gatherers were much healthier compared to agriculturalists, and many of the health problems we see today would not have been present in prehistoric hunter-gatherer societies; moreover, the concept of preventable diseases appearing after the establishment of agriculture is also known as "mismatched diseases", which is talked about in Daniel Lieberman's text "The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health, and Disease", (Source #1). Lieberman discusses how humans are maladapted to their modernized lifestyle, and I will be elaborating upon and referring back to his text and the concept of mismatched diseases in future posts. Returning to the Crash Course World History video, John Green lists the advantages and disadvantages of agriculture as follows:
Advantages:
Controllable food supply
Food surpluses
Can be practiced all over the world
Disadvantages:
Must radically change the environment of the planet
Difficult; requires intense manual labor
Cause of inequality, famine, etc.
In addition, pastoralism provides a steady amount of resources such as meat, milk, wool, leather, etc. However, herding requires constant mobility in order to properly supply the animals with enough food. An interesting fact presented in the video is that there is evidence of snail domestication in Franchthi Cave, which is located in Southern Greece. The people living here were selectively breeding these snails to be larger and more nutritious than the smaller snails.
