Making Living - Textbook Flashcards
What is adaption?
the way humans adjust to their environments to fulfill their needs
What are patterns of subsistence?
food-procuring strategies. Sometimes called the subsistence run.
What are five patterns of subsistence?
- foraging (hunting and gathering)
- pastoralism
- horticulture
- intensive agriculture
- mechanized agriculture (industrialism)
What is horticulture?
Normally small-scale cultivation of crops using hand tools such as digging sticks or hoes.
What are relations of production?
coping mechanisms that societies have evolved.
- these relations and the social adaptions they require of people, such as agreement or consent, are essential adaptions if society is cofunction properly.
What is the balance adaption must establish?
A moving balance between the needs of a population and the potential of its environment.
What refers to the function response of organic or populations to their environment.
adaption
What is anthropogenesis?
The process whereby ecosystems are influenced or altered by humans. Examples include human impact on the environment through pollution, farming, or construction.
What is an ecosystem?
A system, or a functioning whole, composed of both the physical environment and the organisms living within it.
What can too much or too little sickle cells offer?
Having some wicked cells offered a protection against malaria, but having too many resulted in disease and death.
What is an example of bicultural evolution?
the case of the sickle cell
What is the study of ecological anthropology?
focuses on how cultures interact with their environment
How many people, today, support themselves through hunting, fishing, and gathering wild plant foods
perhaps a quarter of million people – less than 0.00005 percent of the world’s population of over 7 billion.
When did the domestication of plants and animals begin?
10 000 years ago
Of all the people who have lived, what percent were foragers?
90%
___years ago the world was sparsely populated and foragers could pick and choose their environments.
ten thousand
Where are foragers found today?
Today, foragers are found only in the world’s marginal areas – the Arctic tundra, deserts, and inaccessible forests.
For how many years has a need existed for at least some specialist “commercial” hunter-gathers to supply the wild forest commodities that have helped east-west trade since ancient times.
2000 years
What characterizes the mobility and technology of foragers?
- do not farm or practice animal husbandry
- frequent movement
- some keep to fairly fixed annual routes and cover only a restricted territory while others have to cover a wider territory
- annual cycle of congregation in one season and dispersion in another
- regular dispersal and aggregation
- nets, bow and arrow
How are foraging camps organized?
- small size
- fewer than 100 people
What is carrying capacity?
The number of people the available resources can support at a given technological level
What is density of social relation?
Roughly the number and intensity of interactions among the members of a camp or other residential unit
What is an important mechanism for regulating social density, as well as for ensuring that the size and composition of local groups are suited to local variations in resources?
redistribution of people
How must foragers make long term adjustments to resources?
Most foraging populations seem to stabilize at numbers well below the carrying capacity of their land. In fact, most foragers could support from three to five times as many people as they typically do.
How do foraging people control population size?
Constant stimulate of the mothers’ nipples suppresses the hormones that promote ovulation. Infants are nursed several times an hour for as many as four or five years.
How is labour divided in foraging societies?
- The hunting and butchering of large games and the processing of hard or tough raw materials: masculine occupation
- Gathering and processing a variety of vegetal foods, domestic chores: women’s work. The nature of women’s work in foraging societies is such the women can do it while taking care of children. They also can do it in company with other women, which helps alleviate the monotony of the work.
What percent of food do modern foragers obtain from plant foods and from the fish and shellfish that women also sometimes provide?
60 to 70 percent
Food sharing is a defining characteristic among which subsistence pattern?
foraging
What is the centre of daily activity and the place where food sharing takes place in foraging societies?
the camp
Why are foragers egalitarian?
- highly mobile
- lacking animal and mechanical transporting
- material goods of foragers must be limited to the barest essentials
- the fact that no one owns significantly more than others helps limit status differences. age and gender are usually the only sources of significant status differences.
What is wealth a sign of in foraging societies?
deviance
What balances rescue distribution with social equality in foraging society?
The forager pattern of generalized exchange, or sharing without any expectation of a direct return.
How many years ago did the transition from food forager to food producer? What is this referred to act?
9000-11000 years ago in several parts of the world. Has been termed the Neolithic Revolution.
What is the neolithic age?
New Stone age. In the Middle East, this period is dated between 8300 and 4500 BC. The Neolithic Age signalled the introduction of domesticated plants and animals, ceramics, and polished tone tools – all related to a change in the subsistence strategy from foraging to horticulture and agriculture. the name, derived from Greek, translates as “new stone age” (neo = “new,” lithos = “stone”).
How is food-producing different than food-foraging?
- requires more work
- monotonous
- larger, more complex communities in which diseases easily mutate and spread
- generally associated with intensive competition for resources
What the is the most likely reason that food-producing happened?
most likely first arose as an untended byproduct of existing food management practices
What was one of the most significant correlates of food-producing way of life?
development of permanent settlements where families of farmers lived together, staying near their gardens.
What lead to a surplus of food in food-producing societies?
production of crop and animal products
What did a surplus in food lead to?
Enabled some people to devote their time to inventing and manufacturing the equipment needed for a new, sedentary way of life.
How did division of labour change in the Neolithic transition?
- Hunting steadily decreased; men cleared fields, manufactured tools and crafts, and controlled trade.
- Women planted and tended the crops and animals, prepared food, looked after the house,and played the central role in childcare.
What is swidden farming?
An extensive form of horticulture in which the neutral vegetation is cut, the slash is subsequently burned, and crops and planted among the ashes.
Where was slash and burn popular?
tropical forests of Mesoamerica, South America, and southeast Asia
What are the benefits of swidden farming?
The system is ecologically sound; it is also far more energy-efficient than farming as carried out in countries as Canada and the United States, which requires eight or more energy units of input for every unit of food produced. By contrast, for every unit of energy expended, slash-and-burn farming produces between 10 and 20 unites.
What is intensive agriculture?
Large-scale cultivators employing fertilizers, irrigation, equipment, and draft animals.
Which subsistence pattern can grow enough to allow for full-time specialization?
intensive agriculture
What are the major crop complexes humans have developed as food producers?
two adapted to seasonal uplands, and two to tropical wetlands
What makes pastoralism a unique adaption?
- those who practiced it were not part of the settled world
- mobility marked the pastoralist regime as something different
What are the roots of pastoralism?
going back to at least 5000 BCE in the Middle East
What is pastoralism based on as a subsistence pattern?
- animal husbandry
- domestication of the herd
- seasonal movements in search of pasture
What percent of nutrition needs come from a pastoralists herds?
60 percent
Pastoral production is found on roughly___percent of the earth’s surface and produces around___percent meat eaten by the world’s population.
- 25
- 10
What is the basic unit of production among pastoralists?
The family
What are gender division like in pastoralist societies?
- there is little overlap between male and female tasks
- men tend the herd while the women process its products
What do pastoralists place the highest value on?
mobility
Most pastoralists are___, meaning that some community members remain in “permanent” villages while others move the herds to different pasturing areas.
seminomadic
What is transhumance?
- we witness with seminomadic pastoralism
- seminomadic pastoralists will migrate between two locations, each of which there will be a regular encampment or a stable settlement
Define pastoralism.
A subsistence strategy that relies on domesticated herd animals and usually requires seasonal movement to pastures.
___are a fairly large component of world pastoralism
camels
With peoples are renowned for their camel herds and long-distance trading?
the Bedouin
Why did the Bedouin quit being pastoralists?
in the 1960s the government and industry, and agricultural projects put them under pressure
How many Iranians are estimated to be pastoralists?
1 million
True or False: in some parts of the world, pastoralism is on the rise.
true
In what ways are pastoralists some of the most marginalized people in the world?
- shot life spans
- ill health
- lack of education
- lack of access to water and sanitation
- economy is under threat
What have pastoralists been blamed for lately?
historic depletion of fertile lands
What was different about urban centres compared to horticulturalists and pastoralists?
Growing populations of large urban centres needed not only to domesticate plants and animals, but also to domesticate themselves. They needed to construct social relations that went beyond the immediate kinship structures of foragers and small horticultural communities.
What was the new social order brought with urbanization?
Marked inequality develops as societies becomes ratified and people are ranked according to their gender, the work they do, or the family into which they are born.
What places marked the first major urbanization of the human species?
Large centres such as Ur, Mohanjo-Daro, and Thebes
When did the Aztec Empire flourish?
In mexico in the 16th century
What subsistence pattern was the Aztec society?
intensive agriculture
What was the principle crop of the Aztec?
corn
What was central to the Aztec social order?
religion
- craftspeople were engaged continuously in the manufacture of religious artifacts, clothing, and decorations for buildings and temples.
What was an extremely important economic and social institution with Aztec?
markets
What was the primary means of exchange at the Aztec markets?
barter
How did markets serve a social function?
People went there not only to boy or sell but also to meet other people and to heart the latest news.
What brought into Tenochitlan luxury foods and luxury items?
trade or tribute networks between the Aztec capital and other cities
What was the Aztec social order stratified into?
four main classes: nobles, commoners, serfs, and slaves
Who was gender equality most marked among with Aztec?
the novels
Who were the Aztects governed by?
a semi divining.
What was the role of government in an Aztec society?
Government official oversaw various sites and functions, such as the team system, the courts of justice, the government storehouses, and importantly, military training
Describe the typical Aztec city.
The typical Aztec city was rectangular and refuted how lang was divided among lines. In the centre was a large plaza where the temple was locate and the house of the city’s ruler. On the outskirts were the farmers huts. In the city proper were the houses of the middle class.
How many houses, estimate, were in Tenochtitlan?
60 000
What was the focal point of Tenochtitlan?
the pyramidal temples where religious ceremonies, including human sacrifices, were held
What is mechanized agriculture?
large-scale agriculture dependent on complex technology and biotechnology rather than human power to increase production
What has foram mechanization resulted in?
laer farms that use more machinery and less human labour and in the intensive use of fertilizers, insecticides, ad over chemicals to maximize yield
True or False: the division of labour on Canadian farms is not gender specific.
false
What threatens the family farm?
advent of corporate farming
When were family farms thriving until?
the mid 1970s
What are obstacles faced by Canadian farmers?
- low commodity prices
- European and American subsidies
- rising expenses
- increasing debts
- fears of environment contamination and ecological disturbance
- government unwillingness to provide meaningful assistance
