Chapter 8 Food

Question 1

Who are the Natufian?

Answer 1

Middle Eastern culture dated fro 13000 to 9000 B.P. located in the Mediterranean woodland zone, their reliance on wild wheat and barley set the stage for the Neolithic.

Question 2

What is a band and their political organization? Also were they good collectors or food producers?

Answer 2

A band is a small group of people (less than 100) and they are nomadic. Little or no political organization beyond immediate kin. Egalitarian in nature.

Question 3

What is a tribe? Subsistence pattern?

Answer 3

Subsistence pattern is often that of horticulture and or hurting with some hunting fishing and collecting. a tribe results when local communities mostly act autonomously but when there are kinship groups that can potentially integrated several local groups into a larger unit such as a clan. Small community size, low population density and Egalitarian in nature.

Question 4

What is a chiefdom? Subsistence pattern? Population density?

Answer 4

A chiefdom has some formal structure that integrates more than one community into a political unit. Most commonly there is a person a chief who has a higher rank of authority than others. Subsistence pattern is intensive agriculture and or herding. Large communities, medium population density. Usually ranked society, ascribed status.

Question 5

What was the Upper Paleolithic/Paleoindian subsistence?

Answer 5

Mega fauna plus some fishing, collecting.

Question 6

What was the Upper Paleolithic/Paleoindian settlement pattern? What was their technology?

Answer 6

Small mobile bands. Blades, atlatls, fluted CSSP, pressure flaking, microliths, compound tools, cordage, art work.

Question 7

What was the Neolithic settlement pattern?

Answer 7

Semi sedentary and seasonal, most sedentary. Consisted of larger hamlets, small towns, growing urbanization in some areas. Expansion.

Question 8

What was the Neolithic social organization?

Answer 8

Much more complex, need for organizational control of materials, labor, trade goods. Early societies often develop into state level theocracies.

Question 9

What are the differences between food collecting and food producing subsistence patterns?

Answer 9

The difference between them is the population density as well as how labor intensive it is.

Question 10

How is population density related to food needs?

Answer 10

It’s related on the fact that the higher the population the more food needed.

Question 11

Can food collecting be a viable survival strategy?

Answer 11

Yes. Certain regions were so abundant in food resources that people could thrive for long periods of time. But eventually it was changed because of population growth.

Question 12

Is domestication the result of the co-evolution of people and plants?

Answer 12

Yes.

Question 13

What are the key characteristics of cultures in early Holocene? Part 1

Answer 13

1. Human groups shifted their subsistence focus as animals and plants they relied on became extinct or unavailable.
2. Broad and rich diversity characterizes cultural adaptation developed by all people in response to new climatic regimes that were established in the Holocene. Diversity reflected: subsistence strategy, artifact assemblage, and settlement patterns.

Question 14

What are the key characteristics of cultures of early Holocene? Part 2

Answer 14

3. In some regions, post pleistocene subsistence base changed from mega fauna to smaller animals, seafood, and birds. Included greater reliance on plant foods.
4. In some areas, focus on abundant resources encouraged a shift from nomadic existence to a more sedentary one.

Question 15

What and when was the Younger Dryas?

Answer 15

Younger Dryas was a rapid and severe shift back to glacial conditions. It began 12,900 years ago to 11,600. Lasting 1300 years.

Question 16

What are the Mesolithic subsistence patterns?

Answer 16

Hunting, plant foods and seafood (foraging)

The subsistence pattern was also regional during the Mesolithic.

Question 17

Chapter Overview

Answer 17

As the post-Pleistocene environment became more

diverse, many areas are marked by increasing cultural diversity during what is called the Mesolithic period in the Old World and the Archaic in the New World.

Different societies responded in different ways to post Pleistocene changes. Some human groups expanded their resource base and practiced a broad subsistence strategy. Others intensified the subsistence quest, do cusing on a small number of particularly rich resources.

Some groups continued a nomadic pattern, moving to exploit the seasonal shift in resource availability. Other groups became more sedentary, investing their subsis tense labors in a particular place.

The food-producing revolution of the Neolithic by the end of the Pleistocene. Some human groups vegan not just foraging for food-hunting wild ani mals, fishing, and collecting edible plants found in nature-but actually producing it. By concentrating and tending plants and taming animals that were of economic importance, and by allowing only those individual animals or plants with characteristics desir able from a human subsistence standpoint to survive and propagate, a number of different human groups began the slow process referred to as “artificial selection.” This shift to food production occurred independently in several places in the New and Old Worlds. Today, our diets reflect a vast and varied array of foods, the great majority of which were first domes ticated by people many millennia ago.