The Neolithic Revolution: The Domestication of Plants and Animals

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Chapter 10

• The Neolithic Revolution The Domestication of
  Plants and Animals

2
Chapter Outline

• The Mesolithic Roots Of Farming And Pastoralism
• The Neolithic Revolution
• Why Humans Became Food Producers
• Other Centers of Domestication
• Food Production and Population Size
• The Spread of Food Production
• Culture of Neolithic Settlements
• The Neolithic and Human Biology
• The Neolithic and the Idea of Progress

3
Neolithic

• The New Stone Age.
• Prehistoric period beginning about 10,000 years
  ago in which peoples possessed stone-based
  technologies and depended on domesticated crops
  and/or animals.

4
Mesolithic

• The Middle Stone Age of Europe, Asia, and Africa.
• Beginning about 12,000 years ago.
• Archaic cultures
• Term used to refer to Mesolithic cultures in the
  Americas.

5
Mesolithic

• The end of the glacial period saw physical
  changes in human habitats.
• Sea levels rose, vegetation changed, and herd
  animals disappeared from many areas.
• This period marked a shift to hunting smaller
  game and gathering a broad spectrum of plants and
  aquatic resources.
• It was a more sedentary period with Increased
  reliance on seafood and plants.

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Mesolithic Tools

• Ground stone tools, including axes and adzes,
  were needed for new technologies in the
  postglacial world.
• Many tools were made with microliths, small,
  hard, sharp blades of flint that could be mass
  produced and hafted with others to produce
  implements like sickles.

7
The Fertile Crescent

• Evidence indicates that the earliest plant
  domestication took place gradually in the Fertile
  Crescent, just east of the Mediterranean Sea.
• Archaeological data suggest the domestication of
  rye as early as 13,000 years ago by people living
  at a site (Abu Hureyra) east of Aleppo, Syria.
• By 10,300 years ago,others in the region were
  also growing crops.

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Fertile Crescent
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Natufian culture

• A Mesolithic culture living in the lands that are
  now Israel, Lebanon, and western Syria, between
  about 12,500 and 10,200 years ago.

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Natufians and Domestication

• The Natufians lived at a time of dramatically
  changing climates in Southwest Asia.
• Between 12,000 and 6,000 years ago, the region
  experienced dry summers significantly longer and
  hotter than today.
• The Natufians modified their subsistence
  practices
• They burned the landscape to promote browsing by
  deer and grazing by gazelles.
• They emphasized the collection of wild seeds from
  the annual plants that could be effectively
  stored to see people through the dry season.

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Natufian Culture

• They buried their dead in communal cemeteries
  (egalitarian).
• Basin-shaped depressions in the rocks found
  outside homes and plastered storage pits indicate
  they were the earliest Mesolithic people known to
  store plant foods.

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The Neolithic Revolution

• The Neolithic, or New Stone Age derives its name
  from polished stone tools characteristic of this
  period.
• This period saw a transition from a foraging
  economy to one based on food production.
• Southwest Asia was one of the first regions to
  undergo this transition.
• Remains of domesticated plants and animals are
  known from parts of Israel, Jordan, Syria,
  Turkey, Egypt, Iraq, and Iran, from well before
  10,000 years ago.

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Domestication

• An evolutionary process whereby humans modify the
  genetic makeup of plants or animals, to the
  extent that members of the population are unable
  to survive and/or reproduce without human
  assistance.

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Domestication of Plants

• Teosinte (A), compared to 5,500-year-old maize
  (B) and modern maize (C).
• Domestication transformed Teosinte into something
  highly desirable.

15
Early Domestication

• Skeleton of domestic v. wild animals very
  different i.e., smaller or no horns
• Archaeologists find more young males eaten
  females presumably left for breeding
• These sites include evidence of trade as well as
  cultivation and domestication.

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Beginnings of Domestication

• Three observations
• Contemporary food foragers have detailed
  knowledge of plant growth and uses.
• A switch from food foraging to food production
  does not free people from hard work.
• Food production is not necessarily a more secure
  means of subsistence than food foraging.

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Neolithic Tools

• Stone that was too hard to be chipped was ground
  and polished for tools.
• People developed scythes, forks, hoes, and plows
  to replace digging sticks.
• There was extensive manufacture and use of
  pottery which requires knowledge of clay and
  techniques of firing and baking.
• Other technological developments included
  building of permanent houses and the weaving of
  textiles.

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Microlith

• A small blade of flint or similar stone, several
  of which were hafted together in wooden handles
  to make tools widespread in the Mesolithic.

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Culture Of Neolithic Settlements Jericho

• An early farming community in the Jordan River
  Valley of Palestine.
• A sizable farming community inhabited as early as
  10,350 years ago.
• Crops could be grown almost continuously, due to
  the presence of a bounteous spring and the rich
  soils of an Ice Age lake that dried up 3,000
  years earlier.

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Culture Of Neolithic Settlements Jericho

• To protect their settlement against floods and
  mudflows they built stone walls (6 1/2 feet wide
  and 12 feet high) and a ditch (27 feet wide and 9
  feet deep).
• A village cemetery reflects a sedentary life.
• Evidence of trade includes obsidian and turquoise
  from Sinai as well as marine shells from the
  coast.

21
The Neolithic

• Skeletons from Neolithic villages show evidence
  of severe and chronic nutritional stress as well
  as pathologies related to infectious and
  deficiency diseases.
• High starch diets led to increased dental decay.
• Domestication encourages a sedentary lifestyle
  with the potential for overpopulation relative to
  the resource base.

22
The Neolithic

• Competition among settlements for resources led
  to increased mortality due to warfare.
• Sedentary life brought sanitation problems as
  garbage and human waste accumulated.
• The close association between humans and domestic
  animals allowed the transmission of some animal
  diseases to humans.

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Archaic Cultures

• Term used to refer to Mesolithic cultures in the
  Americas.
• The change to food production took place
  independently and more or less simultaneously in
  various regions of the world.
• People became more sedentary, allowing for a
  reorganization of the workload, so some people
  could pursue other tasks.
• Some human groups became larger and more
  permanent as people domesticated plants and
  animals.

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Vegeculture

• Root crop farming
• Typically involves the growing of many different
  species together in a single field.
• Tends to be more stable than seed crop
  cultivation, because it approximates the
  complexity of the natural vegetation.

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Diseases Acquired From Domesticated Animals
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Diseases Acquired From Domesticated Animals
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The Neolithic and Progress

• Farming allowed people to increase their
  populations, to live together in substantial
  sedentary communities, and reorganize the
  workload in ways that permitted craft
  specialization.
• There was still a decline in the quality and
  length of human life.

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Other Developments

• Horticulture
• Cultivation of crops carried out with simple
  hand tools such as digging sticks or hoes.
• Agriculture
• Intensive crop cultivation, employing plows,
  fertilizers, and/or irrigation.
• Pastoralism
• Breeding and managing migratory herds of
  domesticated grazing animals.