Subsistence Flashcards
How do we feed ourselves?
What is adaptation?
An adjustment that an organism makes to survive in their environment.
The main adaptation of human is culture.
What is ecosystem?
It is a community of interdependent organisms in a specific environment.
What is Carrying capacity?
It is a maximum population of a species in a ecosystem.
What is Limiting factor?
It is what determines the carrying capacity.
What is Ethnographic present?
It is the present tense the ethonography is done
What is Subsistence?
It is survival, includes many things such as food, clothing, housing, defense, medicine…etc. In anthropology, it mostly means food.
What is Subsistence technology?
It is the tools and techniques of survival.
What is Subsistence pattern?
It is the subsistence technology by which a culture gets most of its energy.
What is Hunting-Gathering?
aka Food Foraging
It is systematic hunting and collecting of wild plants and animals.
People in this culture are most healthy, work 19.1 hours/week, need the most land, stay in a group of 30 people. They eat everything.
This is how human species have spent most of their existence on earth.
What is Horticulture?
aka “slash & burn”, “shifting cultivation”
It is simple gardening where the fields are not used continuously, where there is no soil or water improvement, and simple hand tools are used mainly the ax and the digging stick.
People in this culture have most of their energy from root crops.
26 hours/week
About 12000 years ago.
What is Intensive Agriculture?
It is complex farming where fields are used continuously, where there is water and soil’s improvement, and animals help one to grow crops, mainly with the plow.
About 10000 years ago. Grains.
People in this society are less healthy, not because of the food they eat but mostly disease from dense population and domesticated animals.
8 hours/day x 7 days/week
What is Industrial Agriculture?
aka Industrialized Agriculture
It is farming relying on machine. After 1945. Grains Less healthy More work. Less land use. Larger population.
What is Pastoral-ism?
It is reliance on herding animals for foods.
Healthy. Nomadic. Dairy.
