Posted on 04/06/2019 11:55:47 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
The reason that humans shifted away from hunting and gathering, and to agriculture -- a much more labor-intensive process -- has always been a riddle. It is only more confusing because the shift happened independently in about a dozen areas across the globe... One theory posits that in times of plenty there may have been more time to start dabbling in the domestication of plants like squash and sunflowers, the latter of which were domesticated by the native peoples of Tennessee around 4,500 years ago. The other theory argues that domestication may have happened out of need to supplement diets when times were not as good. As the human population grew, perhaps resources shifted due to reasons such as over-exploitation of resources or a changing climate...
Weitzel tested both hypotheses. He did this by analyzing animal bones from the last 13,000 years and taken from a half-dozen archeological sites in northern Alabama and the Tennessee River valley, where human settlements and their detritus give clues about how they lived, including what they ate.He coupled the findings with pollen data taken from sediment cores collected from lakes and wetlands, cores that serve as a record about the types of plants present at different points in time.The findings are ... mixed.
Weitzel found pollen from oak and hickory, leading to the conclusion that forests composed of those species began to dominate the region as the climate warmed, but also led to decreasing water levels in lakes and wetlands. Along with the decreasing lakes, the bone records showed a shift from diets rich in water fowl and large fishes to subsistence on smaller shellfish.
(Excerpt) Read more at eurekalert.org ...
Agriculture is more labor-intensive than hunting?? I would think that the return on effort expended is much higher for farming.
Our ancestors had 200cc more brain volume ten thousand years ago on average vs today.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
That is an interesting factoid. So....It seems we’ve grown stupider over the generations.
Hunter-gatherer only really works for a nomadic people. If you put down roots scarcity will spread.
There. Fixed it. ;o)
The reason people started farming is that children like flowers and planted them near the house where they were allowed to go. Then their parents noticed there was food right nearby.
Written by someone who planted okra because the plants are beautiful but thinks okra is one of the slimy things those boys used to gross each other out with.
A tribe had multiple locations in an area that it would rotate through.
They would set up camp at a suitable location_A and begin hunting and fishing until the area became depleted at which point they would relocate to a fresh location_B and repeat the process. Eventually they would move back to location_A.
This movement from one camp location to another often followed a seasonal pattern.
My guess is agriculture began not long after the people learned how to use fire as a grassland management tool. They would set fire to a grassland and after the fire scatter whatever seeds they had available around to await the rains.
“Until the area became depleted”
So, they were democrats?
Back in the early days they did both.
Farm and hunt..gather.
He did this by analyzing animal bones from the last 13,000 years”
Not strictly true, apparently...
“the bone records showed a shift from diets rich in water fowl and large fishes to subsistence on smaller shellfish.”
Either he was analyzing shell data all along, or the shell data is being tacked on at the end of his analysis.
“forests composed of those species began to dominate the region as the climate warmed, but also led to decreasing water levels in lakes and wetlands.”
1. The climate warmed without any human inputs.
2. The warming climate led to lower water levels.
So, hypothetical warming-induced sea level rise is counterbalanced by lake and wetland sinking? Interesting to take note of.
Farming allows the former hunters & gatherers more time to sitting around the campfire discussing diversity, racism and wymen’s studies.
LOL
lol
Were there govt subsidies for the fruits?
Yes. That they lived a sustainable lifestyle in harmony with nature is a modern fiction.
How about this. Men hunt, women gather. This requires a nomadic lifestyle because game and stuff gathered begins to run out after a passage of time. So you have to move several days walk away.
But a good place to live will be close to a water supply and for the most part good places will always be good places. So in the course of a lifetime, the same place might be be used several times by the group.
When camp is set up people will use one spot or spots as a common toilet and garbage dump. Some clever person will remember that where the toilet was the last time the camp was there, there’s a lot of food to be gathered, since many seeds pass through the digestive system untouched. The next step, actually planting seeds and hanging around long enough to see them produce food is a big one.
Although agriculture and animal husbandry are more labor-intensive, they do produce a much bigger food supply, which allows for a larger human population in one area than hunting gathering. And of course there’s beer.
There must have been an ancient and relatively high civilization during the last Ice Age that was catastrophically destroyed. That civilization developed farming, bread making, domesticated livestock, dogs, and cheetahs. That civilization is now covered by 300 to 400 feet of ocean.
The comet strike theory has been gaining more and more credence for ending the last ice age and starting the Younger Dryas. As for the putative civilization, Gobekli Tepe find is perhaps just the start of discovering what once was, since it was built around the time of the last strike.
I can imagine one of two ways. First of all, after eating food with indigestible large seeds, like gourds in the Americas. Or noticing that very seed heavy plants, like Amaranth, that would lose many grains while harvesting, would have more plants around them the next season. Amaranth also contains an uncommon but essential amino acid and many minerals.
Thnx!!!!
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