Food Production Guns, Germs, & Steel

Anecdote  Diamond tells a story about working on a farm in southwestern Montana:  He worked with a Native American named Levi on a farm owned by Fred Hirschy.  While Levi was a nice quiet man Diamond was surprised one day when Levi showed up drunk and cursed the farmer “and damn the ship that brought you from Switzerland.”  Diamond points out that Levi’s people had been robbed of their land by farmers like Hirschy.  How did farmers win out of seasoned warriors like the Native Americans?

Early Humans  Early Humans fed themselves exclusively by hunting and gathering food from the wild.  Only within the last 11,000 years did people start food production by domesticating animals and plants.  Most people on earth today eat food that they produce themselves or was produced for them.  In the next few years the bands of hunter-gathers will most likely die out.

Plants & Animals  During the hunter-gatherer days many of the plants found in the wild were inedible for the following reasons:  Indigestible: bark  Poisonous: monarch butterflies  Tedious to prepare: small nuts  Difficult to gather: larvae  Dangerous to hunt: rhinos  By selectively farming those that we can consume on 90% of the land we can obtain more edible calories per acre.

What Food Means  More edible calories mean:  1 acre can feed times more than hunter-gathers  Military power: more food means more military strength, meaning agricultural societies had a greater chance of survival over hunter-gatherers in a conflict.

Domestic Animals  Domesticated Animals fed more people in 4 ways  Meat  Milk  Fertilizer  Pulling plows  Replaced wild game with domesticated meats as the most prominent source of protein.

Milk  Domestic animals also provide sources of milk as well as butter, cheese, and yogurt.  Cow, sheep, goat, horse, reindeer, water buffalo, yak, and camels.  These mammals provide many more calories than animals killed for meat alone.

Agriculture  Domestic Animals helped with crop production in several ways.  Manure: applying manure as fertilizer helps yield large increases in crops. It was also a source of fuel for fires.  Plows: large domestic animals help with plowing fields and prepping soil they would otherwise not be able to use.  Cows, horses, water buffalo, Bali cattle, and yak/cow hybrids.  All these are ways that domestication of plants and animals led to a more dense human population.

Indirect Ways  The consequences of the sedentary lifestyle were less direct on the density of human populations.  Hunter-gatherer societies moved constantly, thereby making the time between childbirth much greater. (On average 4 years between children.)  The reason for this being that children had to be able to keep up on their own before a mother could concern herself with carrying another child in addition to her belongings.

Birth Control  Hunter-gatherers, in order maintain a 4 year space between children, would often ensure the lack of accidental babies by the following methods:  Lactational amenorrhea  Sexual abstinence  Infanticide  Abortion

Sedentary Farmers  In contrast to the H-G families, sedentary families had no need for those forms of birth control.  Since their children needn’t be carried on long journeys they were able to have as many children, as close together, as they could feed.  The typical birth interval for those families was around 2 years, half that of H-G families.  This change had an enormous impact on the population density.

Food Storage  Another consequence of the settled lifetsyle was the ability to store and protect food.  As a H-G an excess of food would need to be eaten or gotten rid of because it could not be protected in the long term.  As a sedentary society food could be stored and protected causing occupations that are not food based to prosper.  Kings, bureaucrats, specialists.

Egalitarian Society  Most H-G societies were egalitarian and little or very small scale political organization.  This was predominantly because any able-bodied person was needed for hunter or gathering.  However, once food can be saved AND kept from harm a political elite can emerge.  Those people, not needing to worry about sustenance, can begin the political activities of taxation, land acquisition, etc.

Chiefdoms to Kingdoms  Small agricultural communities evolved into small chiefdoms where there was a minor area to control.  Even these small societies were much better equipped to defend themselves against attack, or even to participate in a sustained war.  Very rich environment tended to grow in to kingdoms who were even better equipped militarily.

Livestock  Domesticating livestock had more uses than simple food production and population increase.  They also provided warmth in the form of textiles and clothing.  Horses also became one of the main sources of land transportation until the invention of the railway.  Unfortunately they were also the catalyst for many diseases, including smallpox, measles, and flu.

Haves and Have Notes  If you were to look a map showing the first places of agricultural production in the world it would be surprising that so many rich lands were not used until much much MUCH later.  While food production began in 4000 b.c. the rich soils in California and the Pacific coast weren’t cultivated until the arrival of Europeans.

Animals  It is also interesting to point out that many of those same places chose not to domesticate animals on their own, but bring domesticated animals in from other places.  Weren’t these places equally likely to develop agriculture and livestock on their own without outside assistance?

Size & Archeology  Archeologists can determine whether or not a society had domesticated animals and plants in a few ways.  Domesticated cattle and sheep are smaller  Chicken and apples are larger  Peas have a thinner and smoother coating  Domesticated goats have corkscrew twisted horns

Why?  One of the questions that is often asked is why some food are cultivated for domestication and some are not.  Almonds, in the wild, actually contain cyanide and deadly poison.  Some almonds have a mutation making them less bitter and without the gene that breaks down into cyanide.  When birds and eventually farmers discovered this non- bitter almond they started eating them or accidentally planting them in trash heaps.

Other Poisonous Plants  Almonds aren’t the only poisonous plant that was eventually cultivated to be a delicious treat.  Others include:  Lima beans  Watermelons  Potatoes  Egg plants  And cabbages  One of the ways these non-poisonous versions were cultivated was through the excrement of humans and animals.

Seedless Fruit  Another change in food production from human involvement is the advent of seedlessness.  Original fruits of all forms for homes for seeds and a method of distribution.  Once humans started eating things like squash and pumpkin they tried to cultivate only varieties that have a higher flesh to seed ratio.  In modern times seedless grapes, oranges, and watermelons are examples of how fruit no longer serves its original purpose.

Qualities  There were a few qualities that farmers looked for in crops to grow:  Fruit Size (large apples)  Bitterness (non-poisonous almonds)  Fleshiness (pumpkins)  Oiliness (olives)  And Fiber Length (cotton)  Farmers would only harvest and then plant seeds that had these qualities, cultivating fruit that would continue to be desirable.