Agricultural Hearths
Agricultural hearths refer to regions where early farming practices and domestication of plants and animals first originated. These areas are considered the birthplaces of agriculture and have had a significant impact on the development of human societies and civilizations. The concept of agricultural hearths helps to understand the spread of agricultural techniques and the diffusion of crops and livestock around the world.
5 Key excerpts on "Agricultural Hearths"
eBook - ePubThe Five-Million-Year Odyssey
The Human Journey from Ape to Agriculture
- Peter Bellwood(Author)
- 2022(Publication Date)
- Princeton University Press(Publisher)
...8 Homelands of Plant and Animal Domestication IT IS NOW NECESSARY to examine what actually happened with the rise of food production in different parts of the world. I do this in two stages. This chapter discusses the Holocene unfolding of food production in the major homeland regions of agriculture and their hinterlands, drawing mainly on archaeological records. Thus, we examine in turn the Fertile Crescent, East Asia, the African Sahel and Sudan, the New Guinea Highlands, the Andes, Amazonia, Mesoamerica, and the Eastern Woodlands of the United States. For each, we follow the course from the beginnings of domestication to the development of large and mostly sedentary agricultural societies. The following chapters will then examine the crucial question of what happened once people had developed efficient food production in these homeland regions with growing and land-hungry populations. I use data drawn from multiple sources because we must trace not only the archaeological records but also the movements of the people themselves and their languages. We begin this chapter with one of the most important homelands of food production, not just in terms of its status in the history of intellectual enquiry, but also in terms of its impact upon the world. The Fertile Crescent The Fertile Crescent of the Middle East was the homeland for one of the world’s most important agricultural repertoires...
eBook - ePub- Mark B. Tauger(Author)
- 2010(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Chapter 1 The origins of agriculture and the dual subordination The origins of agriculture are visible to us today only from archaeological digs and studies of foraging societies and groups that survived into the twentieth century. Western ideas about agricultural origins began when Europeans encountered “primitive” peoples, who were often foragers and knew little or nothing about farming. Other investigations found that humans and their societies and technologies had evolved over long evolutionary periods that came to be called Paleolithic and Neolithic, and that crop plants and domesticated animals of the world's agricultural systems had definite geographical and temporal origins. These findings led in the 1930s to the idea that early humans had developed agriculture in a “Neolithic Revolution” approximately 10,000 years ago, in response to a drying climate after the end of the last Ice Age. This shift to agriculture led to the development of cities and civilization some 5,000 years later. In this view, farming first developed in the “fertile crescent” of Mesopotamia, where the local flora and fauna included the wild progenitors of the main domesticated food crops and animals. New archaeological research has qualified this conception of the first “agricultural revolution.” Several scholars argued that the shift to farming was so rapid that it must have been preceded by “protoagriculture” for thousands of years before the Neolithic period. A cool and dry period about 11,000 years ago, the Younger Dryas, was followed by a warmer period favorable for the spread of plants and animals in the Near East. New research and rethinking of the evidence have shown that some of the presumed centers of agricultural development actually acquired the idea and techniques of farming from one or more of the smaller number of earlier centers...
eBook - ePubA Prehistory of South America
Ancient Cultural Diversity on the Least Known Continent
- Jerry D. Moore(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- University Press of Colorado(Publisher)
...Douglas Price and Ofer Bar-Yosef recently wrote: “The simple fact is that we do not yet have a good grasp on the causes for the origins of agriculture. The how and the why of the Neolithic transition remain among the more intriguing questions in human prehistory. There is as yet no single accepted theory for the origins of agriculture—rather, there is a series of ideas and suggestions that do not quite resolve the question.” 51 Therefore, while we can assume that the practices of cultivation and, eventually, domestication were the result of human decisions and interactions, the specific pathways to agriculture may be as divergent as the different plants and animals that became the foundations of agriculture in ancient South America. Divergent Agrosystems The diverse sets of cultigens and domesticates were incorporated into an array of agrosystems tailored to fit the varied environments and social settings of prehispanic South America. 52 Many of these agrosystems are still used by modern traditional farmers, and this ethnographic knowledge illuminates archaeological studies of ancient agriculture. We understand that agricultural systems are not simple reflections of the natural environment but rather are active human creations. The cultural geographer William Denevan has noted: “There are no environmental limitations to the development of agriculture, only cultural limitations. ‘Agricultural potential’ is a cultural phenomenon; it is not something inherent in nature that can be measured, that exists independent of culture. Today, with available technology, agriculture can be carried out anywhere on earth...
eBook - ePubOn Human Nature
Biology, Psychology, Ethics, Politics, and Religion
- Michel Tibayrenc, Francisco J. Ayala, Michel Tibayrenc, Francisco J. Ayala(Authors)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Academic Press(Publisher)
...Chapter 19 Multiple Origins of Agriculture in Eurasia and Africa O. Bar-Yosef Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, United States Abstract An overview of the origins of agriculture cases known from Eurasia and Africa, with a brief survey of the Americas, documents only a few “centers” where subsistence based on founder crops and domesticated animals emerged, and where the additional “noncenters” were identified. By examining the evidence of plant exploitation and eventual cultivation practiced by Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene foragers in regions where the information is sufficiently detailed, together with the nature of their habitation sites, one can trace the common processes for the transition from hunting and gathering to farming communities who continued to exploit supplementary wild resources. Keywords Africa; Agriculture; Americas; Asia; Centers; Domestication; Neolithic revolution; Noncenters; River transport; Sedentism; Villages Introduction The history of human technological evolution is dotted with inventions and innovations. Some failed, others succeeded. The emergence of an agro-pastoral economy in a few regions was successful, apparently being the most influential revolutionary process in world history, a fact that did not escape the attention of the people several millennia ago. The Biblical story of the expulsion from the Garden of Eden is a known example, but similar notions were conveyed by early Egyptian, Greek, and Roman mythologies. Interestingly, three goddesses were considered responsible for the change through the introduction of cereals and fruit-tree farming. These were Isis in Egypt, Demeter in Greece, and Ceres in Rome (Harlan, 1992). Comparable tales were recorded in China and the Americas, though sometimes they are male gods...
eBook - ePubBiological Anthropology and Prehistory
Exploring Our Human Ancestry
- Patricia C. Rice, Norah Moloney(Authors)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Then, as landscapes began to fill, people began to farm to meet their dietary needs. Kent Flannery (1969, 1973) supported Binford’s hypothesis but suggested that agriculture began not in zones of optimal wild grasses but rather in marginal areas where people were forced to grow food. However, no early farming sites have been found in marginal areas to support Flannery’s argument. Whereas Binford and Flannery saw agricultural origins as multicausal, occurring within an interlocking natural and human system, Mark Cohen (1977) believed global population growth to be the prime mover. Other models consider cultural factors as prime motivators. Barbara Bender suggested in 1978 that status promoted agricultural growth: People needed surplus food to exchange for status objects. In similar fashion, Brian Hayden (1992) proposed a scenario of competitive feasting through which chiefs gained status and power, and for which food was an essential requirement. Although both factors may well have played a part in food intensification, they are generally considered as unlikely to have been underlying primary causes of the origins of agriculture. Figure 10.4 DOMESTICATION OF PLANTS AND ANIMALS. Domestication occurred independently and at different times in different regions around the world. Which causal model do you think best explains this phenomenon? Source : Adapted from Smith (1995). The key to farming is human domestication of living things. Domestication has been defined as “the human creation of a new form of plant or animal—one that is identifiably different from its wild ancestors and extant wild relatives” (Smith 1995, 18). When humans deliberately affect the growth of certain wild plant and animal species, within a few generations phenotypic (visually apparent) and genetic changes will occur in these wild species as they adapt to different life cycles...
