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In this blog, I am not going to talk too much about how and why agriculture started. There are a tremendous amount of theories and arguments focusing on this topic, and the answer (if we ever find it) doesn’t really factor into answering my two questions. However, it would be useful to attempt to define agriculture and to know when it first began.
Definition:
According to my UC Berkeley professor Lisa Maher, agriculture involves cultivating land, and usually includes raising animals. The main goal of this is to either supplement hunting and gathering (initially), or is the main source of food for people. Whether intended or unintentional, agriculture usually leads to the domestication of plants and animals over time.
When:
Adding to the confusion and debates over the origins of agriculture, there is no single point in time when it began. The map (Figure #6) below shows different points around the world were agriculture began. Archaeological evidence shows that all of these locals occurred independently of one another, all at different times.
Definition:
According to my UC Berkeley professor Lisa Maher, agriculture involves cultivating land, and usually includes raising animals. The main goal of this is to either supplement hunting and gathering (initially), or is the main source of food for people. Whether intended or unintentional, agriculture usually leads to the domestication of plants and animals over time.
When:
Adding to the confusion and debates over the origins of agriculture, there is no single point in time when it began. The map (Figure #6) below shows different points around the world were agriculture began. Archaeological evidence shows that all of these locals occurred independently of one another, all at different times.
The earliest evidence we have for any sort of agriculture is about 12,000 years ago in what is known as the ‘Fertile Crescent’ (in the middle east). A debated reason for why agriculture occurred so late on the human timeline is because of a combination of a growing population and climate change. Regardless of why it occurred, domestication of different plants and animals happened throughout the world. The map below here (Figure #7) shows where some common plants we eat today were domesticated.
For the sake of staying focused on the questions I need to answer, the take-away form the actual transition is basically that independent populations around the world began to cultivate the land and domesticate animals. This means that those populations were no longer the nomads of a hunter-gatherer society, but rather a sedentary society that manipulated the environment in order to feed themselves.
My next few blogs will be focusing on the effects of agriculture during three phases in its evolution: Pre-Industrial, Post-Industrial, and technologically modern. By doing this, hopefully I will be able to determine how and why western societies are the way they are. Also, by looking at the steps taken in the transformation from H&G into todays lifestyle, hopefully I will be able to determine whether or not we, as a society, could revert back to our Paleolithic ways.
Figure #5: http://blogs.utexas.edu/mecc/files/2014/04/agriculture-and-fishing.jpg
Figure #6: http://maxworldhistory.weebly.com/uploads/1/8/9/9/18994149/3831080_orig.jpg
Figure #7: http://lewishistoricalsociety.com/wiki2011/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=65
Figure #6: http://maxworldhistory.weebly.com/uploads/1/8/9/9/18994149/3831080_orig.jpg
Figure #7: http://lewishistoricalsociety.com/wiki2011/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=65