Why agriculture and animal husbandry?

[Mandrake]

I did say it was related. I said it was an initiated due to agricultural development.

Here is exactly what you wrote: "All the accomplishment on your list have evolved due to the development of agricultural development and war needs."

As for war, you got mappin,

Fine. Maps can be used in war. Please show that mapping "evolved due the development of agricultural development and war needs."

geo. exploration, ship, flight communication and engineering. Architecture is related to both war and agriculture. Roman developed irrigation system that are marvelous architecture pieces. I am sure architect learn a lot by building castle and forteresses.

The claim you made was not that there are applications for these things, but that they evolved "due to the development of agricultural development and war needs." Would you like to demonstrate that your assertion is true? Until you do, we have a gratuitous assertion. Agreed?

My list included things which were included in your "all" claim: literature, legal systems, monetary systems, sophisticated musical instruments, complex written music, and universities. Why did you dodge those?
Reminder ... you wrote "All the accomplishment on your list..."

Agricultural is labor intensive but the manhour per personne decreases and the food output increases compare to hunting and gathering, and pastoral communities.

Other than your saying so, how do we know that this is true?

 

[Evo]

Does this relate to the lack of intellectual accomplishment in Sub-Saharan Africa?

Off topic. We are not discussing intellectual accomplishment here.

I presume you understand that Egypt is neither Sub-Saharan, nor a Negroid nation. There are many Negroid nations in Africa and other parts of the world. Is there some reason for not simply explaining why none of them have produced significant intellectual accoumplishments? Or, just provide a list.

Off topic.

It is reasonably obvious that the very low IQs associated with Negroid nations have prevented them from the sorts of intellectual and cultural accomplilshments that have been seen throughout nations populated by the other two primary racial groups. Consider for example: architecture; written language and literature; science; mathematics; medicine; industrialization; even the elementary concept of the wheel; communications; engineering; government; legal systems; monitary systems; naval ships; flight; geographical exploration and mapping; manufacturing; the creation of sophisticated musical instruments; sophisticated written music (Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, etc.); sophisticated works of art; and universities.

Off topic.

Which negorid nations have excelled in any of the above list? Can you compare the intellectual accomplishments (as above) for any Sub-Saharan or other Negroid nation to those of any European country?

Off topic.

If you will go back and read the first post, Neried clearly stated what the topic to be discussed would be. "I think it would be useful to have a discussion of the general topic of how Homo sapiens came to be socially organised into permanent settlements, how agriculture began, and what the factors behind the development of sedentary animal husbandry were.

Then it went off into the role of intelligence, and the rise of technology; these are topics for different threads."

 

[Evo]

In an effort to get the thread back on topic.

Here is a link to an interesting article that just came out.

http://www.egyptsearch.com/forums/Forum8/HTML/000739.html

 

[Mandrake]

Off topic. We are not discussing intellectual accomplishment here.

Off topic.

Off topic.

Off topic.

If you will go back and read the first post,

Thank you, I did read it. Among the items listed were these:

literally hundreds of socioeconomic factors come into play when you try to figure out why blacks score lower on average than asians

The disparity in scores is probably not because blacks are inherently less intelligent than asians.

How does the lack of advancement in technology in Africa play into this? Why is it that Africa lags so far behind in technology then other countries?

raw human intelligence has not really changed much over the last 10,000 to 50,000 years. Certainly we now have better technology, and have figured out more of the world (math, science, etc.) than our ancestors, but that doesn't mean we are inherently, individually, more intelligent than them.

How does intelligence play into the advancement of technology?

How was it that whites were able to go to Africa and build modern cities, etc, if they lacked the resources in Africa?

Why havn't the tribes in Africa advanced exponentially like most of the world?

The recent comments were not inconsistent with the above material. If that material was not intended as part of the discussion, it should not have been quoted so extensively.

 

[Evo]

Thank you, I did read it. Among the items listed were these:

which Nereid, in her first paragraph said "there is a lively discussion of the extent to which many sub-Saharan countries are still economically undeveloped as a result of the genes of their inhabitants, the extent to which those genes are responsible for agriculture and sedantry animal husbandry not having developed independently there, and other nonsenses." These posts were where she wanted to break off from those types of discussions. No problem if you misunderstood, just trying to get the thread back on track.

 

[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.