Chapter 7 Chapter 6 To Farm or Not to Farm

In the past, all people on earth lived as hunter-gatherers.Why would any of them choose food production?If there must be a reason why they did so, why did they do it only in the Mediterranean habitats of the Fertile Crescent around 8500 B.C., and then only 3,000 years later in similarly climatic and geologically tectonic Southwestern Europe? have done so in their Mediterranean habitats, but have never done so in places like California, southwestern Australia, and the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa?Why didn't the inhabitants of the Fertile Crescent become food producers around 18,500 or 28,500 BC, rather than 8,500 BC?

From our modern point of view, all these questions may seem a bit silly at first, because the disadvantages of being hunter-gatherers seem obvious.Scientists often cite words to describe the lifestyle of hunter-gatherers: "harsh, brutish, and short-lived." Basic material comforts such as expensive clothes, and died young. In fact, food production (operated on distant large farms) meant less physical labor and more Enjoy, free from hunger and gain a long life expectancy.Although farmers and herders make up the majority of the world's actual food producers, the majority of them are not necessarily better off than hunter-gatherers.Studies of time management suggest that they probably spent only a fraction more hours per day working than hunter-gatherers.Some archaeologists have demonstrated that the earliest farmers in many areas were shorter, less nourished, more severely ill, and died on average at a younger age than the hunter-gatherers they replaced.If these earliest farmers could have foreseen the consequences of choosing food production, they might not have decided to do it.Since they couldn't foresee this outcome, why did they make such a choice?

There are many instances where hunter-gatherers did see their neighbors producing food, but they rejected the supposed benefits of food production and lived as hunter-gatherers.For example, hunter-gatherers in northeastern Australia have been bartering for thousands of years with farmers on the Torres Strait Islands between Australia and New Guinea.Hunter-gatherers in California bartered goods with Indian farmers in the Colorado River valley.In addition, Khoi herders west of the Fish River in South Africa exchanged goods with Bantu herders east of the Fish River and continued to abandon agriculture.Why?

Still other hunter-gatherers who came into contact with farmers did end up becoming farmers, but only after what seems to us to be an extremely long delay.For example, the coastal peoples of northern Germany did not adopt food production until 1300, after some groups of the Linerbank Kramik culture introduced it to the German interior, only 125 miles to the south.Why did the offshore Germans wait so long, and what made them change their minds in the end? Before we can answer these questions, we must dispel several misconceptions about the origins of food production and reformulate the question systematically.We might at first take it for granted that food production was discovered, or invented, but that is not the case.There is not even a conscious choice between food production and hunting and gathering.Specifically, in every region of the globe, it is evident that the earliest groups selected for food production could not have made a conscious choice, nor could they have consciously made agriculture their goal, since they had never seen it, Know what farming is all about.Instead, as we shall see, food production evolved gradually, a by-product of decisions made without knowing what the consequences would be.The questions we have to ask, therefore, are: why did food production develop at all, why did it develop in some places and not others, why did it develop at different times and in different places, why did it Isn't the time of development earlier or later?

Another misconception is that there must be a sharp line between nomadic hunter-gatherers and sedentary food producers.Indeed, although we often divide them into two distinct populations, hunter-gatherers have settled in certain productive areas, including the Pacific Northwest coast of North America and possibly southeastern Australia, but have never not become food producers.Other hunter-gatherers in Palestine, offshore Peru, and Japan lived sedentary lives before adopting food production much later.Among hunter-gatherers 15,000 years ago, the proportion of sedentary groups was much higher than it is today, because at that time all inhabited places in the world (including some of the most fertile areas) were still inhabited by hunter-gatherers, while the remaining Most hunter-gatherers live in barren areas where nomadic life is the only option.

Conversely, there are mobile groups among food producers.Some modern nomads of the lake plains of New Guinea clear land in the jungle, plant banana and papaya trees, go away for a few months to resume hunter-gatherer life, then come back to see their crops, and if they find them growing, give They weed their gardens, then go out to hunt, and come back a few months later to see if their gardens are producing, they settle for a while to harvest and eat their produce.The Apache Indians of the American Southwest alternated camps along seasonal fixed routes to take advantage of the expected seasonal changes on the rangelands.Thus, the transition from hunter-gatherers to food production did not always coincide with the transition from nomadic to sedentary life.

Another imagined distinction that has actually become blurred is the difference between food producers actively managing the land and hunter-gatherers collecting the wild production on the land.In fact, some hunter-gatherers concentrated their efforts on managing their lands.For example, the natives of New Guinea, who never domesticated the sago palm and mountain pandanus, knew how to increase the production of these edible wild plants by clearing out competing trees and allowing the growth The water in ditches in sago swamps is kept clear, and mature sago palm trees are cut down to encourage new growth.The aboriginal Australians, who had not yet reached the stage of growing yams and seed plants, were able to anticipate some of the principles of farming.They used the Shetian method to treat vine weeds on the ground to promote the growth of edible seed plants that emerged after the burn.When collecting wild yams, they cut off most of the edible root, but rebury the stem with the upper end of the tuber in the soil so that the tuber can grow again.They dig up the tubers to loosen and aerate the soil, which facilitates the regrowth of the tubers.If they wanted to be true farmers, they simply took the stems home with the remaining tubers and replanted them in their camps.

This is how food production originated from hunter-gatherers and then developed step by step.Not all necessary technologies were developed in a short period of time, and not all wild animals and plants that were last domesticated in an area were domesticated at the same time.Even when food production evolved at its fastest pace independently from hunter-gatherer lifestyles, it would have taken thousands of years to move from reliance on wild foods to reliance on few wild foods.In the early stages of food production, people gathered wild food and cultivated non-wild food at the same time, and as the dependence on crops increased, the importance of various gathering activities decreased in each period.

The fundamental reason for this transformation was gradual, because the gradual formation of the food production system was the result of the accumulation of many different decisions concerning the distribution of time and labor.Foragers, like foraging animals, have limited time and energy, but the ways in which they spend that time and energy can be varied.Let us imagine an early farmer waking up in the morning and asking himself: Should I weed my vegetable garden with a hoe today (which is expected to produce a lot of vegetables a few months from now), Or touch some shrimp or crab or something (it is expected to eat a little river fish today), or go hunting deer (you may get a lot of meat today, but it is more likely that you will get nothing)?Human foragers, like foraging animals, are constantly making decisions about allocating labor in order of priority, even if unconsciously.They focus first on their favorite foods, or those that yield the highest rewards.If these foods are not available, they turn to less preferred foods.

There are many issues to consider when making these decisions.People look for food to satisfy their hunger.They also crave specific foods, such as protein-rich foods, fats, salt, sweet fruits, and foods that just taste good.All other things being equal, people seek to get the most in calories, protein, or other particular food variety by finding food in a way that yields the greatest reward with the least amount of time, effort, and assurance. s return.At the same time, they seek minimal risk: modest but reliable returns are preferable to a volatile lifestyle with high average-time returns but a high risk of starvation.One conceivable function of the earliest vegetable gardens, almost 11,000 years ago, was to provide a food reserve as a precaution when wild food supplies were in short supply.

In contrast, the actions of male hunters are often influenced by considerations such as prestige.For example, they might rather go hunting giraffes every day and capture a giraffe a month, thereby earning the status of a great hunter, rather than lower their status, make sure to collect nuts every day, and carry home twice the weight of a giraffe in a month.People are also influenced by seemingly arbitrary cultural preferences, such as viewing fish as either a delicacy or taboo.Finally, their priorities are heavily influenced by the relative value of their preferred lifestyles, as we can see today.For example, in the American West in the 19th century, cattlemen, shepherds, and farmers were all looked down upon by it.Likewise, throughout human history farmers have looked down on hunter-gatherers as savage, hunter-gatherers have looked down on farmers as ignorant, and herders have treated both. despise.All of these factors play a role in the different decisions people make about how to get food. We have noted that farmers on every continent cannot choose agriculture consciously, because they do not see any other farmers in their neighbourhood.However, once food production emerged in one part of a continent, neighboring hunter-gatherers could see the results of food production and make conscious decisions.In some cases these hunter-gatherers adopted the neighboring food production system almost entirely; in others they selected only certain components; in still others they rejected food altogether production while continuing to be hunter-gatherers. For example, hunter-gatherers in some parts of southeastern Europe rapidly adopted Southwest Asian cereal crops, legume crops, and livestock around 6000 BC, all at the same time.All 3 components also spread rapidly throughout Central Europe in the centuries before 5000 BC.The adoption of food production was likely to be very rapid and large-scale in southeastern and central Europe, where the hunter-gatherer lifestyle was less profitable and less competitive.In contrast, food production was gradually adopted in southwestern Europe (southwestern France, Spain, and Italy), where sheep were introduced first and grains later.Japan's adoption of intensive food production from the Asian continent was slow but gradual, presumably because of the abundance there of a hunter-gatherer lifestyle based on seafood and native plants. Just as a hunter-gatherer lifestyle can be gradually converted to a food production lifestyle, one system of food production can be gradually converted to another system of food production.For example, Indians in the eastern United States had begun domesticating native plants around 2500 B.C., but also entered into exchange relations with Indians in Mexico, who based their triad of grains, squash, and legumes on the basis of to develop a more productive crop system.Mexican crops were adopted by Indians in the eastern United States, many of whom gradually abandoned native domesticated plants; squash was domesticated independently, and maize was introduced from Mexico around AD 200 but remained a species until AD 900 staple crop, and pulses were introduced a hundred or two hundred years later.There are even occasional examples of abandoning the system of food production and returning to hunter-gatherer life.For example, hunter-gatherers in southern Sweden adopted agriculture based on Southwest Asian crops around 3000 BC, but abandoned it by 2700 BC and returned to hunter-gatherer life, only to recover again after another 400 years agricultural life. All these considerations clearly show that we should not think that the decision to adopt agriculture was made in a closed state, as if those people had previously had no means of supporting themselves.Instead, we must see food production and hunting and gathering as competing alternatives.A mixed economy that grows certain crops or raises certain livestock in addition to hunting and gathering competes not only with these two "pure" economies, but also with mixed economies with a higher or lower proportion of food production.Nonetheless, the general outcome—over the past 10,000 years—has been a shift from hunter-gatherers to food production.We must therefore ask: What factors make competitive advantage not belong to the former but to the latter? Archaeologists and anthropologists are still debating this question.One reason why this question remains unresolved is that different genes may play a decisive role in different parts of the world.Another reason is how to untangle the causal relationship in the emergence of food production.However, we can still identify five main factors at play; and the debate has largely revolved around the relative importance of these factors. One factor is the reduced availability of wild foods.The lifestyle of hunter-gatherers has become less and less beneficial over the past 13,000 years, as the resources on which they depended (especially animal resources) have become less plentiful or have even disappeared.As we saw in Chapter 1, most large mammals became extinct in South and North America, and some in Eurasia and Africa, by the end of the Pleistocene, either because of changes in climate or It is due to the improvement in skill and the increase in the number of hunters.While the role of animal extinction in finally (after a long delay) pushing ancient Indians, Eurasians, and Africans onto the path of food production can still be debated, on some islands in more recent times There are many indisputable examples of this.The earliest Polynesian settlers wiped out moas and mass-killed seals in New Zealand, and wiped out or mass-killed seabirds and landbirds on other Polynesian islands.Only after that did they intensify their food production.For example, although the Polynesians who colonized Easter Island in AD 500 brought chickens with them, chickens did not become a staple food until wild birds and dolphins were no longer readily available as food.Likewise, a conceivable factor that contributed to domestication in the Fertile Crescent was the reduction in individual densities of wild gazelles, which had until then been the main source of meat for hunter-gatherers in the region. The second factor is that, just as the depletion of wild resources often makes hunter-gatherers less beneficial, the domestication of plants can be more beneficial because of the increased availability of wild plants that can be domesticated.For example, climate change in the Fertile Crescent at the end of the Pleistocene greatly increased the area where wild cereals were produced, allowing large crops to be harvested in a short amount of time.The harvesting of these wild grains was the precursor to the domestication of the Fertile Crescent's earliest crops—wheat and barley. Another factor that is not conducive to hunter-gatherer life is the long-term development of some technologies on which food production may eventually depend--the collection, processing and storage of wild grains.What would future farmers do with a ton of grain growing on stalks if they didn't first figure out how to harvest, thresh, and store it?After 11,000 BC, the Fertile Crescent rapidly developed with the necessary methods, tools, and equipment invented to handle the then-new abundance of wild grains. These inventions included stone scythes mounted on wooden or bone handles for reaping wild grain; baskets for carrying grain home from the hillsides where it grew; stone mortars, pestles, or millboards for husking grain; The technique of germination in storage; and cellars for storing grain, some of which were plastered for waterproofing.Evidence for all of these technologies is abundant at sites of hunter-gatherer populations of the Fertile Crescent after 11,000 BC.All of these technologies, while developed to exploit wild grains, are also necessary to grow food crops.This long development constituted the unconscious first step in the domestication of plants. A fourth factor is the correlation between increased population density and the emergence of food production.Around the world, wherever good evidence is available, archaeologists have found evidence of a link between increased population density and food production.Which is the cause?Which is the fruit?It's a long-debated chicken-and-egg question: Did increasing population density force people to turn to food production, or did food production drive population density? That said, the adoption of food production exemplifies what is known as an autocatalytic process—a process that catalyzes itself in a positive feedback loop that, once started, grows faster and faster.The gradual increase in population density forces people to reward those who inadvertently increase food production in order to obtain more food.Once people started to produce food and live sedentary lives, they were able to shorten the interval between births and produce more people, which required more food.Food production and some technologies that people rely on - the long-term development of wild food collection, processing and storage technologies.What would future farmers do with a ton of grain growing on stalks if they didn't first figure out how to harvest, thresh, and store it?After 11,000 BC, the Fertile Crescent rapidly developed with the necessary methods, tools, and equipment invented to handle the then-new abundance of wild grains. These inventions included stone scythes mounted on wooden or bone handles for reaping wild grain; baskets for carrying grain home from the hillsides where it grew; stone mortars, pestles, or millboards for husking grain; The technique of germination in storage; and cellars for storing grain, some of which were plastered for waterproofing.Evidence for all of these technologies is abundant at sites of hunter-gatherer populations of the Fertile Crescent after 11,000 BC.All of these technologies, while developed to exploit wild grains, are also necessary to grow food crops.This long development constituted the unconscious first step in the domestication of plants. A fourth factor is the correlation between increased population density and the emergence of food production.Around the world, wherever good evidence is available, archaeologists have found evidence of a link between increased population density and food production.Which is the cause?Which is the fruit?It's a long-debated chicken-and-egg question: Did increasing population density force people to turn to food production, or did food production drive population density? That said, the adoption of food production exemplifies what is known as an autocatalytic process—a process that catalyzes itself in a positive feedback loop that, once started, grows faster and faster.The gradual increase in population density forces people to reward those who inadvertently increase food production in order to obtain more food.Once people started to produce food and live sedentary lives, they were able to shorten the interval between births and produce more people, which required more food.Food production and people Only in these places can hunter-gatherers survive until modern times in some areas suitable for food production: three outstanding examples in this respect are: California hunter-gatherer Indians, due to desertification the Khoisan hunter-gatherers in the Cape of Good Hope region of South Africa survived because the Mediterranean climate there was unsuitable for the equatorial crops of the nearby Bantuan farmers Hunter-gatherers down here, and across the Australian continent, continued to survive because of narrow stretches of sea separating them from food producers in Indonesia and New Guinea.Several hunter-gatherer groups that survived into the 20th century escaped displacement by food producers because they were isolated and lived in areas not suitable for food production, especially in deserts and arctic regions.Within the present decade, even they will be seduced by civilization, settled under government officials or missionary pressure, or at the mercy of germs.

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