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 Friday, April 04, 2014 by Lauraustralopithecine
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The Neolithic revolution was actually a gradual event. It probably developed from the practice that some hunter-gathering societies have of encouraging their favorite plants to grow by clearing away competing plants (weeding or burning) and saving the seeds and planting them.
The shift from hunting & gathering to agriculture led to permanent settlements, the establishment of social classes, and the eventual rise of civilizations.
Neolithic villages continued to divide work between men and women. However, women's status declined as men took the lead in in most areas of these early societies.
Why did the establishment of agriculture prevail over hunting and gathering? Agricultural societies simply fed more people, allowed for larger families and so could push out, absorb or slaughter the hunter-gathering societies in the long run.
While no one knows for certain what conditions caused the shift from hunting and gathering to sedentary agriculture, changes in the climate may have been significant factors. It is also probable that increases in human population prompted changes in food production.
The first plants domesticated were the wild grains - barley and wheat - that were common in many regions of the Middle East.
Sheep, goats, and pigs were among the first animals domesticated around 8500 B.C.E. Cattle, more aggressive and faster than the other animals, were added to the agricultural system around 6500 B.C.E.
The development of sedentary settlements accelerated the pace of technological development. Many of these innovations were directly connected to agriculture, including plows, implements, techniques of seed selection, and irrigation. The development of better tools led to better housing and systems for the storage of grain.
The production of food surpluses allowed social differentiation and economic specialization. Some people were freed from the processes associated with the production of food to make other commodities, such as cloth, pottery, and leather goods. Economic specialization led to social stratification and the creation of elite classes of rulers.
The favorite settlement locations were river basins and flood plains. These areas could be relied upon to bring regular floods for the irrigation of crops.
However, Neolithic societies were noticeably more hierarchical than the Paleolithic cultures that preceded them and hunter-gatherer cultures in general.
Families and households were still largely independent economically, and the household was probably the center of life
A significant and far-reaching shift in human subsistence and lifestyle was to be brought about in areas where crop farming and cultivation were first developed: the previous reliance on an essentially nomadic hunter-gatherer subsistence technique or pastoral transhumance was at first supplemented, and then increasingly replaced by, a reliance upon the foods produced from cultivated lands.
Neolithic peoples were skilled farmers, manufacturing a range of tools necessary for the tending, harvesting and processing of crops (such as sickle blades and grinding stones) and food production (e.g. pottery, bone implements). They were also skilled manufacturers of a range of other types of stone tools and ornaments, including projectile points, beads, and statuettes.
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.
