1. McGraw-Hill © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. CONRAD PHILLIP KOTTAK CHAPTER 7 The First Farmers This chapter discusses the development of horticulture and agriculture. It focuses on the development of domesticated plants and animals in the Middle East and in Mexico and shows how these technological shifts were accompanied by changes in social organization.

2. McGraw-Hill © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. CHAPTER 7 The First Farmers –Changes in human subsistence techniques resulted from a combination of human invention and changes in environmental pressures. –“Neolithic period” originally referred only to the presence of advanced stone toolmaking techniques, but now refers to that period in a given region wherein the first signs of domestication are present, with which Neolithic tools are commonly associated. –The earliest Neolithic period occurred in the Middle East, around 10,000 B.P.

3. McGraw-Hill © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. CHAPTER 7 The First Farmers The First Farmers and Herders in the Middle East –The Fertile Crescent’s Environmental Zones The four main environmental zones involved in the origin of cultivation were the high plateau, the hilly flanks, the steppe, and the alluvial plain. In the hilly flanks, habitual harvesting of wild grains did occur, and it is suggested that this abundance led to the first sedentary villages dependent on harvesting wild grains.

4. McGraw-Hill © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. CHAPTER 7 The First Farmers Deliberate cultivation most likely came in response to documented climatic changes, which led inhabitants in the marginal areas of the hilly flanks to artificially duplicate the dense stands of wheat and barley that grew in the hilly flanks. The shift to food production must be viewed as local attempts to reduce risk and increase yields in the subsistence economy. Sedentism preceded food production in the Middle East.

5. McGraw-Hill © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. CHAPTER 7 The First Farmers –Trade The term vertical economy refers to the adaptation that occurs in areas where several different ecological zones in hilly terrain occur close to one another. –The adjacent ecological zones invite modification of local varieties to preserve in one zone what is available in another. –The different ecological zones all had resources peculiar to them: the hilly flanks had grains, the steppe had asphalt, the high plateau had copper and turquoise. Another result was the movement of the grains outside their indigenous zone, where they were subjected to different selective pressures, resulting in different strains of wheat and barley.

6. McGraw-Hill © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. CHAPTER 7 The First Farmers –Genetic Changes and Domestication In wild grains, the axis is brittle, which allows the grain to reseed itself easily. First as an accidental by-product of harvesting, later intentionally, humans selected grains in which the axis was tougher, allowing less grain to fall to the ground, thus raising yields. Humans also selected plants which were more easily husked. Humans selected woolly animals from among wild sheep, thus acquiring livestock better suited to lowland heat and from which to obtain wool. Fossil remains indicate that domestication of sheep and goats was accompanied by a decrease in the size of the animal.

7. McGraw-Hill © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. CHAPTER 7 The First Farmers –Food Production and the State The early stages of food production in the Middle East were marked by gradual transition from foraging to producing economies. Changes caused by food production, such as population increase and the resulting migration, forced other areas to respond. There had also been a gradual, general population increase, which spurred the spread of food production. In the Tigris-Euphrates alluvial plain cultivation required irrigation, which began around 7000 B.P. By 6000 B.P., irrigation systems had become far larger and more complex, and were associated with a new political system, “based on central government, extreme contrasts of wealth, and social classes”: the state.

8. McGraw-Hill © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. CHAPTER 7 The First Farmers –Cultivation evolved independently in areas other than Mesopotamia, based upon crops other than barley and wheat. Sub-Saharan Africa: millets and plantains Southeast Asia: rice China: millet and rice Mesoamerica: maize (corn) South America: potatoes

9. McGraw-Hill © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. CHAPTER 7 The First Farmers –In some areas domestication may have occurred as early as it did in the Middle East. Millet in northern China as early as 7500 B.P. Rice in southern China also around 7500 B.P.

10. McGraw-Hill © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. CHAPTER 7 The First Farmers The First American Farmers –America’s First Immigrants America was first settled by immigrant H. sapiens from Asia, who crossed Beringia, perhaps 25,000 years ago. Descendants of these Paleoindians gradually moved throughout the continent, hunting big game using a stone tool technology called the Clovis Tradition.

11. McGraw-Hill © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. CHAPTER 7 The First Farmers –The Foundations of Food Production Big-game-focused foraging was a widely successful strategy in North America later than in Europe, because of the lasting abundance of game. In contrast to the Old World, large game animals were not domesticated in the New World. Staple crops in the New World were maize, potatoes, and manioc.

12. McGraw-Hill © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. CHAPTER 7 The First Farmers –Early Farming in the Mexican Highlands The Valley of Oaxaca –Inhabitants first practiced broad spectrum foraging, but Oaxaca became the original center of maize domestication. –The foragers practiced a seasonal economy, making societal and geographical adjustments as they moved among the different ecological zones. –The apparent ancestor of maize was a wild grass, teocentli, which experienced a combination of incidental and intentional selective pressures due to gathering and cultivation. As in the Old World, several millennia passed after the origin of cultivation before the first states arose.

13. McGraw-Hill © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. CHAPTER 7 The First Farmers –From Early Farming to the State Unlike in the Old World, the development of food production preceded the existence of sedentary village life in Mesoamerica. Around 3500 B.P., sedentary life developed separately in two parts of Mexico: the Gulf Coast and the Pacific. Early village farming communities also developed in a few highland valleys with conditions uniquely favorable to cultivation. Maize reached the lowlands by 3500 B.P. where, in combination with the easy water, longer growing season, and rich adjacent microenvironments, maize cultivation quickly gave rise to sedentary village farming communities.