Domestification

While sedentary agriculture was not adapted right away in many regions, many peoples began to cultivate crops such as squash and gourds on their seasonal travels for food storage containers in Central America. Both plants were easy to take care of; content to just grow on their own almost anywhere a seed was planted, the hunter-gatherer populations were free to move around without just tending to the plants.

They didn’t have the proper farmland and the same animals. Furthermore, this digressed the way their civilization spread and grew. Diamond researched and established that certain lands were blessed only due to their geographical location. The earliest civilization began in the Fertile Crescent in the Middle East. This land had rich soil and a variety of animals, which made the land promised and geographically lucky. As time passed people living in the area learned new ways to keep their civilization alive. The Fertile Crescent became known as the “Promised Land” and a way of survival was introduced as farming and the domestication of

Response- Humans started agriculture in the Neolithic time. When humans found out that they can plant they started to evolve. More ideas started to grow and finally humans figured out that they can make technology people switched from farming to making things and trading for new stuff .which caused the change in human lifestyles.

How did early civilizations effectively develop and utilize early plants and vegetables to move from hunter-gatherers to agriculturists, and what were the impacts socially, politically, and technically? “Agriculture did not emerge from an untapped resource base or randomly distributed family or tribal units of Homo sapiens sapiens. It emerged as the result of efforts by highly organized ecologically canny communities composed of skilled hunter-gatherers.” In the beginning of what is considered burgeoning civilization, humanities ancestors were what were called hunter-gatherers. They moved from place to place, following the source of their food in order to survive the brutal aspects of early life. If they could not find food, or not find it in sufficient amount, they would starve and eventually die off. Thus, the only decision facing them was to relocate their tribes in order to better take advantage of the available game. As the second portion of their name implied, they were also considered gatherers, in which they subsisted on whatever grains and green vegetables or fruits they could find to eat. It was this kind of lifestyle which led to a smaller, tribal mindset in which you ate what you could, when you could. Over time this began to change, with the establishment of agricultural practices which allowed for availability of much needed crops and the decision of tribes to establish permanent communities, as well as the increase in both number of members and life terms.

It is possible that a social hierarchy was created when such densely packed communities were created, as now human interaction became all the more important, as the relationships between neighbors, and social groups would most likely create tension in the situation. It was also during the time of the Early neolithic in which the first clues of plant domestication began to appear. Though it was the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B period in which domesticated crops including wheat, barley, lentil, peas, and legumes were found. These domesticated grains showed an increase in size and durability . Animal domestication was quick to follow, as Sheep were found to be domesticated in Turkey, Iraw, and Iran, while the reduction in size of the animals, and the discovery of the animals outside their habitat became common finds. Finally, it was during the Late Neolithic period in which a reduction in the number of large villages across the Middle East began. We can see the shift toward a way of life focused on the grazing of domesticated animals, as villages began to shrink, and the population became once again scattered across the land. It was also during this period in which a decline in the role of hunting for subsistence became apparant, as well as Late Neolithic societies reliance on plants that were domesticated during the Early Neolithic periods. We can see from this that the origin of agriculture in Europe came from the usage of Middle Eastern

And after they realized this they began to experiment with planting it for themselves, they would chose the seeds from the best plants which allowed for better and better crops for less work. As this was happening people started to settle down focusing more and more on farming than hunting. (Though not everyone stoped hunting, and in North America, they balanced farming with hunting and gathering.) And as more and more people settled together better farming led to people making more food than was necessary, providing a surplus. People began to be able to do more than make food. Cities began to form, becoming more and more complicated as building, writing, medicine, and government, began to evolve. (Though again not everyone lived in cities, many pepople choose to continue living as

It all started because of the slash and burn cultivation, which consisted of cutting down all organic life in a certain field, setting it on fire, and coming back some time after, when the soil would have been much more efficient of supporting the area. This technique started since hunters and gatherers were constantly on the move and realized that after forest fires, the land had much more potential for growing plants more effectively. Once again, this was not considered to be progress because these people were never aiming for this result, it was just a coincidence that first occurred in Southwest Asia. Furthermore, this was mainly the beginning of horticulture, a lifestyle based on plant cultivation, which landed between gathering and

In order for animals to live in an area, two basic needs have to be met by that location. First, the climate in that area must conform with the climate the specific species needs to survive. As explained previously, the climate of an area relates to its geographic location. This is why animals such as polar bears live in Antarctica and Alaska, areas farther from the equator, which have less sunlight and less warmth. The second requirement is that there has to be food which the animal is able to digest. Animals such as cows, which depend on grass for food, would not be able to live in an arid or desert-like environment. Grass just isn’t going to grow there. This means that areas which have prime conditions for containing domesticable animals, which just so happened to be Eurasia, have a significant advantage in the form of technological development over areas which don’t have the right climate or the right foods to sustain domesticated animals. Because these animals provided a sustainable source of food, as well as performing farming tasks such as pulling plows, they gave societies with domesticable animals access to a very important resource, time. With that, these societies were able to develop concepts such as art and to sustain specialists. Not all animals can be domesticated. They have to be able to cooperate with humans and make economic sense. In order for a species to be domesticable, it has to have the inclination to not attack or eat humans, otherwise, the species could be dangerous to domesticate. Along with that comes the ability to actually control the species. A species has to have a hierarchy-like social structure in order for humans to be able to control a whole pack of animals, which is much more sensible than trying to train every individual animal. They also need to be economically sensible.

Agriculture first took hold in the Middle East where they began by cultivating wheat. From there agriculture spread to the surrounding areas and into Asia Minor. Each geographical region growing the grain most suited for their area. This led to a dependence of the staple grain for the area because these grains could be grown in abundance and a surplus kept, human populations relied heavily on that single crop for sustenance. The reliance of a single food source led

We’ve changed and altered everything to make it match our taste and needs. That’s genetic modification known as artificial selection, just now we have more advanced technology that can be used to make drought resistant crops and disease free crops as

Geography affects agriculture because they needed the right climate to grow certain crops and the climate is determined by the geography. Most crops need a warm and dry climate to grow and that is determined by the country’s latitude and longitude. Having to the right climate and crops is critical for the crops and their own survival. They would want crops like wheat and barley because they are quick and easy to grow and harvest and they are high in nutrients. They would not want crops like sago because it is low in nutrients, it’s a lot of time and energy to harvest, and it takes years to grow to full size.Wheat and barley will only grow in a dry climate like in Eurasia so the Eurasians already had an advantage on the rest of the world because they had the best circumstances for grow crops. The people of Papua New Guinea had a disadvantage

Steven Hermosillo Professor Duran History 101 February 21, 2016 Agricultural Revolution “Around 10,000 years ago global climate changes seem to have induced some societies to enhance their food supplies with domesticated plants and animals” (The Earth and Its People). The climate change was a major factor in the first people to plant their own crops instead of hunting all day. “The Agricultural Revolution is best defined as the change from food gathering to food production that occurred between about 8000 and 2000 B.C.E. and is also known as the Neolithic Revolution” (The Earth and Its People). Early day humans were known as “hunter gatherers”, who would hunt all day for food and bring back home to feed their families.

They also need a specific type of food source, which is controlled by the climate.The civilizations that have the right temperature and food for animals that can be domesticated are able to develop faster than civilizations that don’t have domesticated animals. This is because domesticated animals save a lot more time than going out and hunting, which makes more time to invent new things to help their civilization develop. The Fertile Crescent had a sub-arid climate with seasons. Because this allowed them to farm wheat and barley, the Fertile Crescent didn’t need as many people to help out with preparing their food. This opened up time for those who didn’t need to help out on the farms, and they discovered that not only they could capture and grow their own crops, but they could also capture and raise animals. Over time they figured out that most animals that can’t be domesticated is because of their diet, growth rate, tendency to panic, have a tendency to kill humans, or have problems with breeding in captivity,. An 1,000 pound animal needs about 10,000 pounds of food, and if a civilization were to domesticate a carnivore, then that animal would need 10,000 pounds of herbivore meat, which would need to be fed 100,000 pounds of crops, which is 90,000 pounds of food that could be used for humans to eat rather than their livestock’s food. If a

The civilizations that had the most of these domesticable animals advanced faster than others because of the advantages they provided. For an animal to be successfully domesticated for agriculture, it requires traits like a solid social structure with a hierarchy so a human can take control of its pack. It also has to reproduce quickly and have an inclusive diet to be farmed efficiently without forsaking too many resources toward it. Southwestern areas of the Middle East like the Fertile Crescent had many of these domesticable animals, leading the inhabitant people to become some of the first in history to farm them. These animals revolutionized life for people who domesticated them in many ways such as horses pulling heavy plows effectively for planting, sheep providing warm clothing for people to explore and expand into colder climates, and cows providing nourishment in the form of milk and meat. All of these advantages over other civilizations in the field of agriculture contributed greatly to the inequality of the world, especially since places like New Guinea had no domesticable animals until very late in

The advancement in thinking along the experience of their life, the late stage of the civilization formation was developed with some of supporting aspects. The failure in cultivation before is a good experience for them to learn how to grow plants. This people made a planting plan and build the supporting facility to cultivate. They tried to vary the kind of plants, barley and wild grains, for instance, and invented an irrigation system. Consequently, they can harvest their crop for a long time. Moreover, this advance human groups prefered to a wide opened fertile land to a