Hart And Lovis Case Study

Early farmers in Europe and elsewhere practiced shifting cultivation, also known as swidden agriculture.Although the lands around the Mediterranean seem to have shared a complex of crops and farming techniques, geographical barriers blocked the spread elsewhere. Rainfall patterns south of the Sahara favored locally domesticated grains—sorghums, millets, and (in Ethiopia) teff—over wheat and barley. In the Americas a decline of game animals in the Tehuacán° Valley of Mexico after 8000 B.C.E. increased people’s dependence on wild plants. Agriculture based on maize (corn) developed there about 3000 B.C.E. and gradually spread. The first domesticated animal, the dog, may have helped hunters track game well before the Neolithic period. Later, animals initially provided meat but eventually supplied milk, wool, and energy as well.Meat eating did not decline during the revolution.

The emergence of agriculture was a major stepping stone in human history. During this birth of agriculture, also known as the Neolithic revolution, humans began inhabiting permanent settlements, grow their own crops, and domesticate both plants and animals for food (Weisdorf, 2005). Considering humans have been hunter-gatherers for the majority of their approximately 7 million years of existence, the emergence of agriculture in the Old World only occurring 10,000-5,000 years ago, marks a significant transformation in food sustenance techniques (Weisdorf, 2005). However, this turning point in history is associated with both positive and negative implications. There is much controversy over whether or not the introduction of

The development of agriculture by Native Americans more than five thousand years ago sparked new cultures and innovations. Hunters who previously roamed the land like nomads established permanent villages. Corn, sun, and water became focal points for many societies and played

The spread of maize agriculture from present-day Mexico into the present-day American Southwest changed Southwest Indian environments by creating a more permanent living situation. Pueblos began to be built and villages were created around maize fields. This form of agriculture also led to a decrease in the hunter-gatherer lifestyle.

My focus is on the agriculture and maize domestication of both areas. Maize was first domesticated in Mesoamerica, southern Mexico about 9000 years ago and dispersed into the southwestern United States during the late middle archaic period.

a. The cultivation of maize, introduced heavily by sophisticated civilizations such as the Incas, Mayans, and Aztecs, helped to feed large population sizes, thus facilitating the spread of its cultivation across North America. By 2000 BCE, Pueblo peoples, due to the new cultivation of maize, developed irrigation systems. By 1000 CE, maize reached to modern-day SE America, which influenced Creek, Choctaw, and Cherokee peoples by growing and feeding their populations.

The Neolithic Revolution took place from around 10,000 B.C.E. to 4000 B.C.E. and was thought to be one of the largest transformations in human culture. The transition in lifestyle centered around the shift from a life of hunting and gathering as the main source of food to a life of agriculture through the cultivation and breeding of animals, plants, and fungi as the main source of food. The planting and growing of crops allowed for a dependable and steady source of food and income for many individuals in several parts of the world. This transition was known as the Agricultural Revolution, a movement enabling more people to put a halt to their nomadic ways and settle in one location. This revolution is so important to the evolution of human

First, the forced cultivation and consumption of corn on the Plains Natives had a negative impact on their health by limiting their diet in comparison to their ancestors. Utilizing Bioarcheology, historians and scientists have been able to examine the

Corn crops were a staple life force in the early cultures of the natives. This caused the natives to cease their early practices of hunting, gathering and moving from place to place. It helped them transform into a more agricultural society. This crop was high in yield which could sustain a large population, therefore contributing to a growth and stability of their civilizations

Much of the farming flourished in Mesoamerica, the Mexican valley of Tehuacan, is where the plant teosinte was specialized in becoming maize, the main crop of the Americas. They even learned that planting beans next to these crops enriched the soil to make them better. These great crops made for good trade with non-farming traders, due to their large surplus. Rich communities had become strong enough to capture their weaker neighbors and use them for labor and to gain riches such as land.

Native Americans started the development of maize. In 1491 Mann says, “Indians developed an extraordinary number of maize varieties for different growing conditions, which meant that the crop could and did spread throughout the planet”(pg17). With the spread of maize the Indians caused several

ii) It reached the southeastern Atlantic seaboard region of North America about A.D. 1000, making the “three-sister” farming, with corn, beans, and squash, possible.

Cahokia was a large, complex settlement built by Native Americans that lived along the Mississippi River in about 950 C.E. near present-day St. Louis and East St. Louis, Illinois. At the city’s peak at around 1150 C.E., nearly ten thousand citizens lived on more than five square miles of 120 earthen “mounds.” At the time, Cahokia was the third-largest city in the Americas, and it contained multiple residential neighborhoods, plazas, and religious sites. Scientists and historians widely agreed that corn had been cultivated in this region since as early as the year 1000 C.E. At the location of the ancient city, archaeologists discovered corn fragments, such as kernels and cobs, in sites that were dated to the year 1000 C.E. and earlier. Several

Historians recently have been pushing towards accepting oral histories as valid historical sources and the video I examined of an elder identifying and explain the traditional medicinal uses of plants solidifies the need to continue this movement. The series of videos features Carolla Calf Robe, an elder from Kainai, as a guest speaker in a class identifying medicinal plants and land use of the Blackfoot people, knowledge that was passed down from her own mother. Calf Robe explains this is knowledge every Blackfoot person should know as common household information or as she states the “Indian First Aid Kit”, although whether it is common knowledge is debatable. I will argue how this primary source is an invaluable source with my hope to examine the preservation of traditional medicinal plant as another form of resilience from tireless efforts of assimilation.

Complexity in nature acts as a limiting factor on not only the human species, but also all the species of earth. Ecosystems residing between the tropics possess immense biodiversity that creates barriers to human expansion, often in the form of disease. As early humans migrated from tropical ecosystems to less elaborate, temperate ecosystems, a “niche-shift” took place (McNeill 55). Homo sapiens found themselves in a less-resilient habitat, inhibiting new survival tactics. Agriculture arose as means to make survival simpler. Rather than expending energy gathering edible plant species, humans began growing those species on plots of land. Inherently a “desire to liberate food from nature” arose amongst groups of humans, which came to be the early workings of human civilization, known as settlements (Pollan 117). Cultivation of plants as means of simplification allowed