Why agriculture and animal husbandry?

[selfAdjoint]

Well, I think agriculture, as distinguished from gardeneing, depends on one of two things. Domestiction of large powerful animals capable of pulling a wooden plow through heavy soil, or mastery of canalization to irrigate softer deposited soils that can be worked with hoes. Agriculture can be delayed or even prevented from happening in areas where neither of these breakthroughs are possible.

 

[Nereid]

Jared Diamond, in "Guns, Germs, and Steel (The Fates of Human Societies)" (1997), in Table 5.1 "Examples of Species Domesticated in Each Area" lists 5 areas where plants and animals were independently domesticated, 4 more where domesication may have occurred independently, and 3 others where local domestication followed the arrive of founder crops from elsewhere.

Here is the table (dates are confirmed radiocarbon dates):
Area ...... Plants ...... Animals ..... earliest date of domestication
1. Southwest Asia .. wheat, pea, olive ... sheep, goat ... 8500BC
2. China ... rice, millet .... pig, silkworm ... by 7500BC
3. Mesoamerica ... corn, beans, squash .turkey ...... by 3500BC
4. Andes&Amazonia . potato, manioc ... llama, guinea pig ... by 3500BC
5. Eastern US ... sunflower, goosefoot {none} ...... 2500BC

1. Sahel (Africa) ... sorghum, rice ... guinea fowl .... by 5000BC
2. Tropical W Africa . yams, oil palm ... {none} ..... by 3000BC
3. Ethiopia .... coffee, tef ..... {none} ..... ?
4. New Guinea ... sugar cane, banana .. {none} ..... 7000BC?

1. Western Europe .. poppy, oat ..... {none} ..... 6000-3500BC
2. Indus valley ... sesame, eggplant ... humped camel ... 7000BC
3. Egypt ... sycamore fig, chufa ... donkey, cat ... 6000BC

Thanks Evo for your link; it certainly suggests a much more complex picture than that implied by Diamond's table. Does anyone have knowledge of other updates to this table, in terms of consensus within the relevant scientific fields?

 

[Nereid]

I was unaware of that. Perhaps you can explain it by considering the items I listed:
architecture
written language
literature
science
mathematics
medicine
industrialization
the wheel
communications
engineering
government
legal systems
monitary systems
ships
flight
geographical exploration
mapping
manufacturing
sophisticated musical instruments
sophisticated written music
sophisticated works of art
universities.

A good number of these items are so totally unrelated to agriculture and war as to be laughable. If you really believe your comment, maybe you can just tell us what historical points caused the appearance of each of the items and then explain that the ultimate causation was agriculture or war related.


Really? Can you show us some information that tells us how much manhour savings is associated with agriculture, versus whatever else you have in mind?

It's very kind of you to say so. Perhaps you would like to show us that you are correct and that I am not. Are you going to list the Negroid countries that have excelled in any of the listed items?


Do you believe that the items I listed are related to IQ? I assume you don't, but you have the opportunity to say so. For example, do you think that there are successful mathematicians who have IQs at or below 100? Do you believe there are any Nobel Laureates in science or medicine with IQs below 130? Do you believe that Richard Lynn was right or wrong in concluding that the wealth of nations can be shown to relate to the mean IQs of those nations?

Mandrake, as Evo has pointed out, I would like the topic of this thread to be the origin of agriculture and animal husbandry, or the domestication of plants and animals.

From my last post, you will see that all the things in your list clearly post-date independent developments of domestication (with the possible exception of the wheel). Once I've got at least one more thread started, let's discuss your ideas - including Lynn and your list - in those new threads, OK?

 

[Mandrake]

Once I've got at least one more thread started, let's discuss your ideas - including Lynn and your list - in those new threads, OK?

Fine with me.

 

[Nereid]

Diamond (Guns, Germs, and Steel; pp110-112) mentions five factors that played key roles (in varying degrees):
1) decline in the availability of wild foods
2) increased availability of domesticable wild plants
3) cumulative development of technologies on which food production would depend
4) rise in human population density <-> rise in food production
5) higher density of food producers (those who'd developed agriculture and/or animal husbandry) enabled them to displace or kill neighbouring hunter-gatherers.

He also takes some pains to point out that the independent developments were not discoveries or inventions, but rather evolutions - the transition happened gradually as 'a by-product of decisions made without awareness of their consequences', over a quite considerable period of time (certainly far more than 1 generation). I recall reading a report of a recent archaeological finding (Middle East?) that the period between when cereals were first gathered, processed and eaten and their deliberate cultivation was as long as 12,000 years.

 

[Andre]

Here is some unexpected news about donkeys:

The first domesticated donkey was born in Africa

An international team of researchers, with the participation of UAB professor, Jordi Jordana, has published in Science magazine the results of their investigation into the origins of the domesticated donkey. The authors have discovered by using genetic analysis that the domesticated donkey originated in northeastern Africa approximately 5,000 years ago, quite probably due to the desertification of the Sahara. The conclusions of the study state that all domesticated donkeys come from two different lines from northeast Africa.

 

[Nereid]

I don't know. Africa has an abundance of species.

Now why could Eurasians succeed in domesticating the fierce Bos Primigenius and why not the African with one of the many herbivores like Syncerus caffer? Why could the Indian Elephant be domesticated and why not the African elephant?

Why would http://www.evolution.uni-greifswald.de/eng/10.php ? Even in the same genus. Numbers did not even have to increase, the savannah steppe has been more productive the last few thousands years than today given the increased aridness the last few centuries.

Perhaps it was not necessary to do so or perhaps is the secret in those numbers. The wild animals may have been too abundant perhaps or continued to compete successfully against the individuals that were under human control.

Well, Diamond ("Guns, Germs, and Steel") addresses each of these points; perhaps a PF member has some updates (or can reference different conclusions/research)?

First, elephants - African or Asian - were never domesticated, those put to use by humans have been tamed (they were born wild, captured, then trained; no captive breeding, no selection of favourable traits).

Second, Africa does have fewer large native mammals in its potentially domesticable universe - Diamond used >45kg herbivores or omnivores as his universe, and finds there are but 51 in Africa, vs 72 in Eurasia (and 24 in the Americas, and 1 in Australia; all the other large mammals were gone within 1,000 years of Homo sap.'s arrival).

Third, while the aurochs may have been fierce and an unlikely candidate for domestication, it was in fact domesticated independently at least twice - different subspecies in India and southwest Asia - the only others among the 14 which appear to have had multiple independent domestications are the dog, pig, and (maybe) llama*. Clearly fierceness alone isn't a sufficient barrier to domestication!

Fourth, in modern times, with all our vastly superior understanding, no large mammal has been newly domesticated - all 14 species of domesticated mammal were domesticated many thousands of years ago (though for some the date of domestication is uncertain).

So why can't Homo sap. - pre-historic or 19th-21st century - domesticate the other >130 big mammal species?

*Edit: update, add donkey to this list.

 

[0TheSwerve0]

Do we need to domesticate them? I found a http://216.109.125.130/search/cache...+domestication&d=Jd6gw2FULmr0&icp=1&.intl=us"that brought up these questions:

Questions to consider:
1. What are the characteristic plants and animals exploited by the early regional civilizations [the Near East, South Asia, the Far East, sub-Sahara Africa, North and South America]?
2. How did Old World agriculturists remedy the inadequacies of a diet based on barley, wheat, or millet?
3. Why is Old World agriculture, unlike New World [ancient American] agriculture, always associated with domesticated animals?

Seems our ancestors didn't plan out some long-term scheme for their subsistence; much in our subsistence changes seems inadvertant - agriculture began with small scale "pushing" of wild plants. They practiced gathering-hunting with minimal pushing for a very long time. It's not as if they didn't know the benefits, they just weren't that great. The same thing can be said for animal domestication. They could act opportunistically - capture animals and save them for later became small scale nomadic herding. Seems they wouldn't have thought to try and capture a big mammal; that'd just be foolish

Nowadays, we don't need the help of big animals. Seems machines are much more efficient, affordable, and safer. It's a matter of need rather than ability. Or have I totally missed something?

 

[WhiteWolf]

Diamond (Guns, Germs, and Steel; pp110-112) mentions five factors that played key roles (in varying degrees):
1) decline in the availability of wild foods
2) increased availability of domesticable wild plants
3) cumulative development of technologies on which food production would depend
4) rise in human population density <-> rise in food production
5) higher density of food producers (those who'd developed agriculture and/or animal husbandry) enabled them to displace or kill neighbouring hunter-gatherers.
He also takes some pains to point out that the independent developments were not discoveries or inventions, but rather evolutions - the transition happened gradually as 'a by-product of decisions made without awareness of their consequences', over a quite considerable period of time (certainly far more than 1 generation). I recall reading a report of a recent archaeological finding (Middle East?) that the period between when cereals were first gathered, processed and eaten and their deliberate cultivation was as long as 12,000 years.

Well, first off, I loved that book, but since you covered it so perfectly, I don't know what I can say that hasnt already said in the process. I think everything in this thread can be answered perfectly by what is in that book.