KGA100/101/152/162 Environment & Society
Jim Russell Lecture Overheads Fri 31.8.01
Copyright Jim Russell
Domestication and Agriculture
What you need to understand ...
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Definitions of agriculture and domestication.
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The transition to agriculture: when, where, what;
why - more speculative, difficult.
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A perspective on the changes: a major shift in
how humans valued nature ('Neolithic
Revolution')?
Through ag., did people transform themselves
from being part of nature to exploiters of nature?
The Neolithic Revolution
Agriculture means the exertion of control over the
genotypes of plants and animals: the process of
domestication (Simmons 1990, p.20).
Domestication is the process of genetic tailoring of
species by humans. ... [C]hanging the genes so that
any desirable characteristics are passed on to later
generations of the plant or animal species concerned
(Simmons 1990, p.64).
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Hunter-gatherers: 'deflection' of ecological
processes, not domestication:
e.g., keep vegetation in a culturally desirable state species all wild rather than tamed, domesticated
(Aboriginal burning)
(Note: hunter-gatherer domestication of dogs)
The Neolithic Revolution: Environmental
History
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Hunter -gatherers: 'farming' - e.g., harvest wild
grasses seed, protect from birds
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Fertile Crescent (Middle East): cereal
agriculture/animal-husbandry with sheep, cattle
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Irrigation - ditches on alluvial fans - Middle East,
Indus,Yellow R. =
3rd major lasting alteration to ecosystems, after:
the human move to be top predator
the effects of fire on grasslands
Results: energy surpluses, storage: permanent
settlements, population increase, stratified society,
owners - slaves, warfare ....
History of Environmental Transformations
No river, stream, spring, aquifer and flood not fully
exploited in Arab lands by 1000 AD
Start of env. management and env. problems of a kind
not seen before
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drainage-irrigation - not necessarily stable: good
water management; soil salinity (Simmons p.12)
by at least 1700 BC, severe silting, salinity
problems in Mesopotamia (Tigris R. region)
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rise of pastoralism - ca. 4500 BC? - Middle East,
Asia: implicated in desertification in more arid
areas (usually assoc. with climatic change, partly
caused, accelerated by human activities ...)
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Landscape alterations
e.g., terraces - the padi (wet rice field)
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Species transport
cultural interchange or conquest: Portugese:
maize, sugar cane, bananas, grapes to West
Africa 1400s
weeds, pests (incl. parasites) went, too:
European plantain: 'white man's footprint'
Simmons (1994: pp. 22-28) covers transformations,
including
forest, woodland management,
coastal reclamation,
quarrying,
hunting,
gardens - even on to examples of pollution, early
attempts at conservation as we know it (200 BC in
India - list of animals forbidden to kill; elephant forests
set up).
Why the Change to Agriculture?
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herding animals, cultivating grains
simultaneous in many places - single
cause? Poorly understood, but
- end last glacial: temp. rose, rain patterns changed,
Pleistocene grasslands with great herds of game
declined, animals depending on grasses extinct mammoth
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Conjecture: x-variate causation in local contexts
(Oelschlaeger 1991)
- humans poised technologically (tools), culturally
(ideas of crops, tame animals): less food with climate
change reinforced tendency already there
- population pressures? Once abandon hunt, hard to
go back without losing people; sedentary life of
agriculture affects human physiology - higher birth
rates
- ideological changes? Elites depend on surplus,
people valuable as labour
Aboriginals and Agriculture
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Why not - as in New Guinea, some
Torres St islands?
pig in N. G. 10,000 yrs ago from Asia,
Indo. islands;
spades, drainage ditches for growing
Taro in highlands radiocarbon-dated
9,000 yrs;
gradient from N. G. horticulturalists with
pigs, fenced gardens across Torres to
nomadic hunter-gatherers of Aust.
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Various reasons given
no contact ag. groups; cultural
conservatism;
hostility to outsiders; lack suitable plants,
animals; deliberate choice (Flood 1995,
Ch. 17)
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?Favoured theory: affluence
Affluence - no need?
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population below env. carrying capacity
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returns from foraging so great that extra
effort cultivating crops not worth it ...
Yet, Aboriginals - 'semi-ag.' practices
yams cut to grow again, marked by owners,
planted on islands; fruit trees at camp sites
wild millet harvested on enormous scale Mitchell 1835 on Darling: 'hayricks'
stretching miles - stacked in heaps for seed
to ripen
storage surplus food: seed in Darling area,
Central Aus.: skin bags, wrapped in grass,
mud-coated
Conclusions: Agriculture and the Wild
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Environmental history: the Neolithic shift a great
ecological transition: humans went from hunter
and forager of wild plants, animals to controller of
many genotypes (domesticates), and initiated a
wide variety of environmental transformations
Principle 1: Societies must re-invent their views, relations
with nature as they and environments change.
Principle 2: Environmental history can be used to understand
past relations with the environment, past perceptions of
nature.
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Our knowledge of why and how changes took
place involves considerable speculation
Principle 3: Difficult, complex to know "truth" - the how and
why - of societies' relationships with the environment.
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Do the roots of ideas that humans must
conquer nature lie in the agricultural
transition?
Were these ideas necessary when
climate change made hunting and
gathering non-viable in many places?
Principle 1: Ideas of nature, the wild not fixed, but changing
and need to change.
'Our civilisation still rests, and will continue
to rest, on the discoveries made by peoples
for the most part unknown to history.
Historic man [sic] has added no plant or
animal of major importance to the
domesticated forms on which he depends.'
(Carl Sauer 1952, Agricultural Origins and
Dispersals)
A Major Shift in Human Relations with
Nature?
Clearly, yes (by definition - refer to agriculture,
domestication).
Farmers rose up to dominate the wilderness.
'Formerly man [sic] had been part of nature; now he
was the exploiter of nature (White, Jr., cited in
Schama, 1996, p.13).
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The end of the wild being 'home'?
The beginning of separation of society from
nature, boundaries drawn between nature and
culture? (No longer 'children of nature', viewing
the earth as the 'great Mother' of mythology.)
The beginnings of all our present-day
environmental problems?
Too simple? H-gs had already initiated major
ecological changes: from hunted to the major predator.
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Instead of assuming 'mutually exclusive character
of Western culture and nature, I want to suggest
the strength of the links that have bound them
together' (Schama,1996, p.14).