EXAM #2/CH.9- Flashcards
Development of Agriculture helped….
- Changed Human Culture
- Changed Human evolution
- Changed the earths Biosphere
What is The Eden Metaphor?
- A transition from an earthly paradise to our present reality(facilitated by a snake)
- In effect, a transition from a hunting and gathering(Eden)life to that of agriculture(post Eden)
The Command from God vs. effect of domestication
-God: the woman will suffer pain in childbirth
Domestication(more frequent childbirth in agriculture culture)
-God: the man will be condemned to work the ground until he dies and returns to it
Domestication:(higher work and increased disease in domesticated food production).
EX. Cain(farmer)has his gifts to God(produce)rejected,
Able(a shepard-hunter/gatherer)had his gift of a lamb accepted.
Jared Diamond believed that….?
-If they(early H Sapiens) had actually foreseen the consequences (of domestication), they would have surely outlawed the first steps…”
Archaeological & anthropological data show that…?
-hunter-gathers(HG) were overall healthier than (AG) until likely the 19th century
Notes of the Video showed that…?
- The sites of early agriculturalists were clearly in what are now extreme deserts
- While people did overuse the resources(cut down trees, caused soil erosion)-the climate of the region has slipped toward drier conditions over the past 10,000 years
- The climate shift has helped facilitate the transfer of the mid-East domesticated plants and animals laterally
Agriculture and “Guns Germs and Steel”
Jared Diamond has proposed a hypothesis that humans that lived in the right places(places where domesticable species lived)at the right time(transition between glacial and interglacial)where able to…?
- Develop agriculture
- “Create” communicable diseases
- Develop technology that allowed them to dominate the globe
What is Environmental Determinism(climatic determinism or geographical determinism)?
- Is the view that the physical environment sets limits on human social development.
- Old use: tropical climates were said to cause laziness, relaxed attitudes and promiscuity, while the frequent variability in the weather of the middle latitudes led to more determined and driven work ethics.
- Human culture &human genetics can change and are entwined in a connection with the environment-(we can only excel to the degree that our environmental resources allow us.)
What is Possibilism?
- Is the theory that the environment sets certain constraints or limitations, but culture is otherwise determined by social conditions
- Belief that anything is possible through ingenuity
What are Diamond’s Hypotheses of Reasons for Domestication and Ag?
- Reduction of large mammals by improved hunting
- Development of technology to store wild grain
- Competition between human groups
- Global climate change into an interglacial(holocene)
What did Origin of Agriculture Require?
- Changes in plants and animals
- Changes in human behavior
What are some obstacles in Domesticating animals?
- Diet not easily provided by humans
- Slow growth and long birth spacing
- Nasty disposition
- Reluctance to breed in captivity
- lack of follow the leader behavior
- Panic in enclosures
Characteristics of Domesticated Animals are?
- Smaller brains
- Less acute senses
- Some smaller(cattle)
- Some bigger(chickens)
- Large variety depending on use(wolf hounds, terriers, greyhounds, chihuahuas
Ag Homelands have shifted from…?
-original centers to today has much to do with changing climate
The continental major axis is oriented east-west for Eurasia but Nort-South for the Americas and Africa. The spread of food production tended to occur more rapidly along…?
-East-West axes than along north-south axes, mainly because locations at the same latitudes required less evolutionary change or adaptation of domesticates than did locations at different latitudes.
What are some Examples of Slow N-S Transfers?
- Slow spread of Mexican corn
- Slow spread of Llamas
- Slow spread of potatoes
What are Consequences of Domestication/AG?
- Shorter birth intervals(>4 years for nomadic women.)
- Higher food density/area(larger populations)
- Caused cultural stratification(armies,kings,philosophers)
- Allowed evolution of epidemic diseases(transfer from crowded livestock to humans)
EX.Measles and TB from cattle
Flu from pigs and ducks
smallpox from camels or cattle
Origin of Diseases?
-Diseases from “Eden” & “post Eden”
Reasons for Differences Between Temp & Tropical Disease Origins
- Many domesticated animals are of temperate origins
- Primates most closely related to humans are to tropical origin
- Few(or no) domesticable animal species in tropics
What are the Results of Domestication?
Germs & Armies
What was the Role of “Germs” on European Conquest of New World?
-By the time the Pilgrims arrived in North America, 95% of Native Americans were dead from disease derived from domesticated species
What was the Final Species Domesticated by Farming?
Humans!
Effects of Domestication on Human Evolution?
- Spread of human genes from ag centers to hinterlands
- Genetic resistance to disease
- Adult lactase in Europe & parts of Africa from life-long milk consumption
- Alcohol metabolism in Western Eurasia
- Adaptations to lower fiber, higher fat, higher salt, etc.
Diet Impacts our…?
Phenotype: genotype+environment=phenotype
Genotype: genetic coding
Modern Ag/Diet & Human Evolution has allowed us to…?
- Being metabolically thrifty a disadvantageous genotype in modern supermarket foraging lifestyle
- Salt conservation leads to hypertension
- Populations that recently had Spartan diet now subject to array of dietary disease(blood pressure, diabetes) that cause natural selection
- –Europeans may already have partially passed through this filter
- –Important to China,Asia,etc.(growing hotspots of TypeII diabetes
What was the Pre-Ag Diet?
-Paleolithic diet also known as the caveman diet
Brain size of Hominids: Need for Meat…?
- Our brain takes about 20% of our energy
- an “expensive” organ facilitated by ability to hunt & gather nutritious foods
Human Height Over Recent Time: Nutrition?
- Human height declined to a (recent) low at the start of the Industrial Revolution
- Height picked up in late 19th Century as North America Ag kicked in to supply Europe with grain and meat.
Nitrogen in Soil…?
- builds up naturally over time
- Once a soil is plowed or cultivated, the N is rapidly reduced to about 50% of original level
- Most soils around the world(not tropics)suffer from N deficiency
- This limited agricultural production for thousands of years
- how did we overcome this? A.(Haber-Bosch Process)
What is the Haber-Bosch Process?
- N2+H2(and lots of energy)=NH3
- 1 to 2% of world’s energy used for this
- Fritz Haber, 1918 Nobel Prize
- –Father of chemical ware are
- –wife & son committed suicide
How did the Haber Bosch process help world population?
-Between 50 to 60% of the world’s population exists today because of the Haber Bosch process and the food produced by it.
Our diet & our history…
- We have experienced 10,000 of dietary change
- Is this long enough for us to have adjusted evolutionarily?
- “Paleodiets” are efforts to recreate diet of pre-at humans(no grains, daily, sugar, oils)
What did “stone age” people eat?
- they were omnivores
- maybe more than 50% meat calories
Why was/is meat important to humans?
-Big brains=energy/nutrient expensive organ
What were Humans of the Middle Ages like?
- Small due to poor nutrition
- Europe had reached its carrying capacity
- Continued to the start of the Industrial revolution
Why did European height start to climb in the 19th century?
- Increased food supply from North American market
- grain expansion into the Plains and Midwest