11 The First Farmers

Anthropology:Appreciating Human Diversity

14th Edition

Conrad Phillip Kottak

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The First Farmers

• The Mesolithic• The Neolithic• The First Farmers and

Herders in the Middle East• Other Old World Farmers• The First Farmers in the Americas• Explaining the Neolithic• Costs and Benefits

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The First Farmers

• What similarities and differences marked the Neolithic economies of the Old World and the New World?

• What costs and benefits are associated with food production?

• When and where did the Neolithic originate, and what were its main features?

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• With glacial retreat, foragers pursued a more generalized economy, focusing less on large animals. This is the beginning of broad-spectrum revolution.

• Wider range of plant and animal life hunted, gathered, caught, collected, fished.

• Revolutionary because it led to food production – human control over the reproduction of plants and animals.

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The First Farmers

– In Europe, foragers pursued more generalized economy, focusing less on large animals

– Broad spectrum revolution: 15,000 BP in Middle East and 12,000 BP in Europe• Broader spectrum of plant and animal life

hunted, gathered, collected, caught, and fished

• Domestication of plants and animals for food occurred, independently, in Old World and the Americas around 11,000 years ago

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The Mesolithic

• Fishhooks• Harpoon tips• Dart tips

– New hunting techniques– New kinds of axes, chisels, and gouges

• Mesolithic followed Upper Paleolithic– Microliths: small stone tools

typical of Mesolithic technology

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The Mesolithic

• Generalized, broad-spectrum economies persisted about 5,000 years longer in Europe than in the Middle East

• Technology reflects shift from focus on herd game hunting to more varied and specialized activities (gathering)

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• Broad-spectrum economies lasted 5,000 years longer in Europe than in the Middle East. Whereas Middle Easterners had begun to cultivate plants and animal breeds by 10,000BP, food production reached Western Europe only around 5,000BP.

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The Neolithic

– The transition from Mesolithic to Neolithic occurred when groups became dependent on domesticated foods

– Shift toward the Neolithic was under way in the Middle East by 12,000 BP

• Neolithic: refers to new techniques of grinding and polishing stone tools

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• Neolithic Revolution refers to the origin and impact of food production (plant cultivation and animal domestication).By 12.000 BP in the Middle East (Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Jordan and Israel) people started intervening in the reproductive cycles of plants and animals. No longer just harvesting nature’s bounty, they grew their own food.

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• The primary significance of the Neolithic was the new total economy rather than just its characteristic artifacts (pottery).

• Cultivation• Sedentary life• Use of ceramic vessels

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The Neolithic

– Middle Easterners moved away from a broad-spectrum foraging pattern toward more specialized economies based on fewer species, which were domesticates.

• By 10,000 BP, domesticated plants and animals were part of a broad spectrum of resources used by Middle Easterners.

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The Neolithic

• During the era of increased specialization in food production (7,500 to 5,500 BP) new crops were added to the diet, along with more productive varieties of wheat and barley.

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• Dry farming: farming without irrigation, such farming depended on rainfall.

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Recap 11.1: The Transition to Food Production in the Middle East

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The First Farmers and Herders in the Middle East

– High plateau (5,000 feet)– Hilly flanks: a subtropical woodland

zone that flanks rivers to the north– Piedmont steppe: a treeless plain– Alluvial desert: watered by

Tigris and Euphrates rivers

• Fertile Crescent’s Environmental Zones

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• Food production did not start in alluvial desert which relied on irrigation systems to sustain cultivation. Instead, plant cultivation and animal domestication started in areas with reliable rainfall (re. dry farming)

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• Deliberate cultivation eventually became most intensely practiced on alluvial plain

– Started in hilly flanks (woodland zone north of Tigris and Euphrates rivers) that had more abundant wild wheat and barley• Binford: in local environments rich

in resources foragers adopted sedentism: a sedentary life in villages

• Natufians (12,500–10,500 BP): widespread Middle Eastern foraging culture

The First Farmers and Herders in the Middle East

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• Hilly Flanks foragers and the Natufians settled close to grain fields. They stored their grain. Their sheep and goats used to grace on the stubble that remained after harvest. Hence, they established village life (houses, storage pits, ovens)

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The First Farmers and Herders in the Middle East

• Deliberate cultivation most likely came in response to climatic changes

– A drying trend (end of the Ice age,11,000 BP) shrank the zone of abundant wild grain.

– The Natufians tried to maintain their productivity by transferring wild cereals to well-watered areas.

– Recent archaeological finds show that food production began in marginal areas (adopting new subsistence strategies).

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The First Farmers and Herders in the Middle East

– Early cultivation began as an attempt to copy, in a less favorable environment, dense stands of wheat and barley that grew wild in the hilly flanks. As climate dried up those living in marginal areas had to experiment and adopt new subsistence strategies for food production.

• Sedentary village life developed before farming and herding in the Middle East.

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The First Farmers and Herders in the Middle East

– Exploited environmental zones that were close but contrasted with one another in altitude, rainfall, overall climate, and vegetation. Allowed the use of different resources in different seasons.

– Movement of people, animals, and products between zones was a precondition for the emergence of food production.

• The Middle East had a vertical economy, as had Mesoamerica, including Mexico, Guatemala, Peru.

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Figure 11.1: The Vertical Economy of the Ancient Middle East

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• The shift from foraging to food production was gradual.

Food Production and the State

– Middle Eastern economies became geared more exclusively toward crops and herds.

– In the hilly flanks areas, people began to intensify production by cultivating.

– Farming colonies spread down into drier areas with the invention of better irrigation techniques.

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• In Mesopotamia, a new economy based on irrigation and trade fueled the growth of an entirely new form of society: the state.

• The state: a socail and political unit featuring a central government, contrasts in wealth, and social classes.

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Other Old World Producers

– Three in the Americas– Four in the Old World

• Food production spread, through– Trade– Diffusion– Migration

• The path from foraging to food production was followed independently in at least seven world areas:

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• Considerable complexity existed in southern Egypt’s Neolithic economy and social system.

The African Neolithic

– 12,000 BP: Nabta Playa occupied• Early evidence of “African cattle complex”

– 9,000 BP: People were at Nabta year-round.

– 7,500 BP: New settlers occupied Nabta after a major drought.• Brought a more sophisticated

social and ceremonial system

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The Neolithic in Europe and Asia

• 6,000 BP: Thousands of farming villages grew up, from Russia to northern France.– Domestication and Neolithic economies

spread rapidly across Eurasia.

• 8,000 BP: Communities on Europe’s Mediterranean shores were shifting from foraging to farming.

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The Neolithic in Europe and Asia

• China became one of the first world areas to develop farming, based on millet and rice.– Discoveries suggest that rice was

domesticated in the Yangtze River Valley as early as 8,400 BP.

• 8,000 BP: Domesticated goats, sheep, cattle, wheat, and barley were present in Pakistan.

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Figure 11.3: Seven World Areas Where Food Production Was Independently Invented

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Recap 12.2: Seven World Areas Where Food Production Was Independently Invented

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The First Farmers in the Americas

– Large game animals were not domesticated in the New World.

– Three caloric staples were domesticated by Native American farmers:• Maize: corn• Potatoes• Manioc: cassava

• The most significant contrast between Old and New World food production involved animal domestication.

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The First Farmers in the Americas

– Mesoamerica – Eastern U.S.– South-central Andes

• Food production independently invented in at least three areas of the Americas:

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The Tropical Origins of New World Domestication

– Peruvian squash seeds date back 10,000 years.

– 9,000 and 8,000 BP: farmers selected desirable characteristics in cultivated plants

– 7,000 years ago: farmers expanded their plots into the nearby forests

• New World farming began in the lowlands of South America and spread to Central America, Mexico, and the Caribbean Islands.

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Tropical Origins of New World Domestication

– Teosinte: the wild ancestor of maize– Maize cultivation had spread to the tropical

Mexican Gulf Coast by 7,300 BP.

• Maize domestication took place in the lowlands of southwest Mexico.

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The Mexican Highlands

– Small animals more important than big game– Oaxacans hunted and gathered in fall/winter– Came together in late spring to

harvest seasonally available plants– By 4,000 BP: a type of maize was available

that provided more food than mesquite pod – By 3,500 BP: permanent village were set up,

based on maize farming

• Before farming, highlanders hunted:

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Explaining the Neolithic

– Development of a full-fledged Neolithic economy required settling down.

– Sedentism became especially attractive when several species of plants and animals were available locally.• The Fertile Crescent had the largest

area with a Mediterranean climate, and had the highest diversity of species.

• Several factors converged to make domestication happen:

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• With climate change, population growth, and the need for people to sustain themselves in the marginal zones, hunter-gatherers started cultivating.

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Explaining the Neolithic

– Some world areas managed independently to invent domestication• Inventory too meager to maintain a Neolithic economy.

– Presence or absence of domesticable animals helps explain divergent trajectories• Perhaps key factor is animal social structure (the easiest

wild animals to domesticate live in hierarchical herds, hence are accustomed to dominance relations).

• Why no carts in the New World?

• Full-fledged Neolithic economy requires a minimal set of nutritious domesticates

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Geography and the Spread of Food Production

– In Eurasia, plants and animals could spread more easily east–west than north–south.

– The spread of Middle Eastern crops southward into Africa was eventually halted by climatic contrasts.

• The geography of the Old World facilitated a diffusion of plants, animals, technology (wheels and vehicles), and information (writing).

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Geography and the Spread of Food Production

– A lack of large animals suitable to domestication also slowed the Neolithic transition in the Americas.

• In what is now the United States, the east–west spread of farming (southeast to southwest) was slowed by dry climates of Texas, southern great plains

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Figure 11.4: Major Axes of the Continents

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Costs and Benefits

– Spinning and weaving– Pottery and brickmaking, arched masonry– Smelting and casting metals– Trade and commerce

• By 5,500 BP, Middle Easterners were living in vibrant cities.

• Food production brought the advantages of discovery and invention.

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Costs and Benefits

• The new economy also brought hardship:– Food producers

typically work harder than foragers.

– Herds, fields, and irrigation systems need care.

– Producers have more children.

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Costs and Benefits

• Diets become less varied• Disease grows easier to spread (population

concentration)– Social inequality and poverty increase

• Resources are no longer common goods. Slavery invented. Wealth differentials. Crime, war.

– The rate at which human beings degrade their environments increases with food production.• Deforestation in the Middle East.

– Public health declines

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Recap 11.3: The Benefits and Costs of Food Production (Compared with Foraging)