The Development of Food Production

 Fig. 1. Grig, Sona. “Wheat.” Online Image. Flickr. Flickr Creative Commons, 5 March 2013. Web. 15 Dec 2013.

Around 10,000 years ago, groups of hunters and gatherers left behind their foraging lifestyle and gradually became food producers: farmers and herders. At that time plant cultivation and animal domestication started in the Middle East, then in about 5,000 B.P. it spread to Western Europe and another 500 years later – to Northern Europe. Independent of the Middle East food production was also invented in Andean Region. Somewhere in between 8,000 B.P. – 4700 B.P. the invention of food production took place in different parts of China and Mesoamerica, around 4500 B.P. in Eastern United States, and 4000 B.P. in Sub-Saharan Africa. These inventions and their spread afterwards played major role in the human history of city and state development. But the main topic that scientists were interested in was the reason that triggered the switch from hunting and gathering to food production. So the main goal of this paper is to explore the facts and understand what led to the development of food production by humans and why they domesticated those particular crops and animals.

One of the reasons that triggered food production was the climate change. With the end of the Ice age and ice sheets melting, tundra and steppe vegetation with their inhabitants gradually moved north, and a rich variety of food appeared to be available for people. It allowed them to be less dependent and, consequently, specialized on hunting big animals, and let them explore and experiment with the broader spectrum of food resources. Although hunting was still the important part of people’s economy, they started to pay attention to different available species of plants, fish, and much smaller animals. Over time, people built up larger populations by merging small communities and took advantage of wild resources. As mentioned in Peter Richerson’s book, in this period people were developing seed grinding, digging and other tools which can be considered as preadaptation to plant cultivation. In addition to the latter, people were interested in small animals much more than bigger ones. For example, in Andes, the amount of deer bones declined, while the amount of guinea pig bones increased. The end of the Ice Age brought rich variety of plants and animals: some areas were so rich of wild resources that people could settle down, develop villages, and live nearby sufficient amount of food to sustain their families.

Sedentary life in villages was another trigger to food production. As a result of sedentary lifestyle, population size of the villages were growing; thus wild resources nearby became no longer enough for supporting families of the communities. So for the first time this forced people to think about using naturally less favorable lands in order to control the reproduction of plants and animals. For example, according to Kottak, Natufians were one of the groups of people who started to settle in villages around 12,500 – 12,000 B.P. in Hilly Flanks zone. They had year-around villages; they was collecting wild cereals and hunting gazelles, and were able to stay in the same place because of the availability of resources. At some point, they had to build villages near stands, because they needed storage for harvested grain. At the same time their animals could graze on stubble after harvesting had been done. Around 11,000 B.P. this pattern was threatened by a second dryer climate change, as a result of which optimal zones shrunk and Natufians were forced to stay in areas close to water. Because their population was growing and the collected wild grain was not enough to sustain it, for the first time Natufians tried to relocate wild cereal to well watered areas, where they put a start to cultivation. Sedentary life and attempts of plant cultivation also triggered animal domestication; people could not follow animals, which are mobile. They had to think of something which would give them easy and fresh meat.

People domesticated particular animals and cultivated particular plants. One reason is the fact that particular plants can grow in specific climatic zones and particular animals can live and reproduce only in certain favorable conditions. Another important reason is that people were looking for plants that they could change in their favor and animals that they could control and feed easily. So people were trying to combine those two in particular species. For example, as Kottak mentions, the seeds of domesticated cereals are larger. They have stronger connective tissue holding seedpods to the stem. In dry weather, wild wheat and barley ripen in just 3 days. But people found some types of these plants that have stronger axes and domesticated those particular ones in their own favor. In addition to these issues, wild cereal’s edible portion is enclosed in a strong husk, which was very hard to remove using a pounding stone. Humans chose these seeds for domestication because they could cook them for eating. As to the animals, the ones chosen for domestication were those which were easy to control, had simple diet for easy feeding and required shorter time to grow. Another criteria was their usefulness for physical help to people, such as transporting materials, pulling a load behind them, and so on. As a result of long “experimentations”, humans got larger plants, and smaller animals.

Food production played very important role in human evolution. Humans started to discover and invent new tools and methods, got advanced understanding of social, scientific, and creative forms of living. But at the same time, compared with hunters and gatherers, these innovations made living and working harder for humans; their diet was changed, health got worse. In the future, these changes brought crime, wars, social stratification, and, finally, environmental deterioration.

Works Cited

Kottak, Conrad Phillip. Anthropology: Appreciating Human Diversity. New York. McGraw-Hill. 2011. Print.

Richerson, Peter. Principles of Human Ecology.PDF File.