Chapter 5 – Origins of Food Production
 99% of human existence was as hunters and gatherers, tied to the movement of plant food
 Agriculture, the deliberate cultivate of cereal grasses and edible plant roots has only been
around the last 12,000 years of human existence
 Changes in Hunter-Gatherer societies
 by 15 kya the worlds population was approaching about 10 million
 only several late-ice age areas, such as southern france and the nile valley, were populated
 Social complexity among hunter-gatherers
 First, population movements had to be limited by geography or the presence of neighbors
 Second, resouces have to be abundant and predictable in seasons
 Third, food shortages in an area
 Social complexity was most common in areas with seafaring food souces exsisted
 Domestication – a relationship of interdependence between humans and food
 Sedentism – living relativley permanantly in one place, usually characterized by more complex
architecture and materialist culture
 The Neolithic World – centers of the prehistoric world, in the old world it was the Fertile
Crecent and in the new world it was the Mesoamerican
 In the middle east, demestication was very diverse, including cattle, sheep, cats, barley and rye.
 Domestication and sedentism is not nessarsarily linked.
 The more hunter-gatherer societies, agricultural societies have the ability to support a larger
population.
 Studies show that hunter-gatherer societies had a lot more leasure time than agricultural
societies
 Agricultural societies had a higher infant mortality and infeaction rate, as well as, loss of
strenth and life expectancy
 There are many theories of why the agricultural revolution started
 In the Fertile Crecent, sedentism started before domestication.
 These sedentary hunter-gatherers had villiges with round structures, storage pits, grinding
stones and sickle-like agricultural tools.
 During domestication people select for larger seeds, more docile animals,
 New architecture suggests maybe defensive, environmental, or ritual reasons
 Around this time period of domestication, we see a birth of deities, as well as, the 'worship' of
ancestors
 These Neolithic Villages did not become major city centers.
 These villigers eventually turned to dispersed pastoralism
 Catalhoyuk, Turkey was a large and dense settlement that loasted longer than the rest
 In Mesoamerica, mobile hunter-gatherers domesticated wildlife and then became sedentary
 Before agriculture, the culture focused on desert plants and animals
 The evidence for domestication comes from Oaxaca
 The Three Sisters, corn, beans, and squash, were grown together.
 It took several thousand years to domesticate Teosinte into Maize cob
 These changes are characterized by a non-shattering cob, multiple kernal rows, and
larger cob and kernal size.
 When squash was domesticated, the larger seeds came first, then thicker rinds and
brighter color next.
 Dogs and turkey were the domesticated animals that exsisted in mesoamerica before the
Conquest
 Large domesticated animals did not exsist in Mesoamerica.
 Domesticated crops predated sedentary villeges about 2000 years
 This domestication did nothave a large impact on their diet and lifestyle
 Farming methods included slash and burn, terraces, and, raised fields
Cheifs and Cheifdoms
 Acheological Indicators of inequality are palaces, elaborate public construction or burials
and presige goods
 Antropologist Elman Service made the distinction between prestate and state-organized
societies. Prestate societies are divided into bands, tribes, and cheifdoms
 Bands are less than 100 people and are characterized by being mobile hunter-gatherers
and having an informal leadership with shaman religious
 Tribes have a few throusand people and are usually more sedentary and are all early
farmers
 Cheifdoms go from around 5k to 20k. They have a larger tie with religion and
government. Also possess large-scale monuments.
 Cheifdoms develop greater social inequality and a hereditary elite.
 Moral economy based on delayed reciprocity
 Elaborate burial practices and elaborate public monuments
 Elite control of long distance exchange, causing luxury or prestige goods
 mirconesia and polynesia had no metal so the societies relied heavily on stone tools.
 Polynesian cultures have very similar cultural tradititions and extamblished seperate
cheifdoms
 Ancestral Pueblos exsisted from 400 to 1300 AD in southwest area of the United States
 Cahokia exsisted form 2000 BC to 1650 AD that flourished around the Mississippi flood
plain areas, but ceremonial mounds surrounded Cahokia for miles
State-organized societies
 V. Gordon Childe defined the 10 acheologically identifiable characteristics of civilizations
 Urban cities, Large territories, birth of the city is the origin of the countryside
 Labor specialization
 Social Stratification
 Food Surplus
 Taxation and Tribute
 Monumental Public Works
 Long-Distance Trade
 Record Keeping and Writing
 Science and Math
 High Arts and State Religion
Pros and Cons of States
 Pros
 Political Stability
 Increased access to exotic goods
 advances in sciences, arts, agriculture, and technology
 Higher populations
 Massive public works
 State-organized spectacles, games
 Cons
 Increased inequality
 Reduced Trading Autonomy
 Endemic Poverty
 More labor demands on the poor
 Loss of political autonomy
 Interdependence can create instability
City and out species
 99% of human exsistance our species had been non-urban
 around half the worlds population is now living in an urban environement
 increase contact with animals
 actute community infections are able to survive