The Neolithic Transition: The Domestication of Plants and Animals

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Chapter 10

• The Neolithic Transition The
  Domestication of Plants and Animals

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Chapter Preview

• When and Where Did the Change from Food Foraging
  to Food Production Begin?
• Why Did the Change Take Place?
• What Were the Consequences of the Neolithic
  Transition?

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When and Where Did the Change from Food Foraging
to Food Production Begin?
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Mesolithic Roots of Farming and Pastoralism

• Refers to the Middle Stone Age of Europe and
  Southwest Asia began about 12,000 years ago.
• The term Archaic cultures is used to refer to
  Mesolithic cultures in the Americas.

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Mesolithic Roots of Farming and Pastoralism

• After the extinction of Ice Age megafauna,
  hunters and gatherers expanded their repertoire
  of foods broad spectrum revolution
• This broadening of the diet could not have been
  accomplished without the technological changes
  associated with microliths

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Microliths

• A small blade of flint or similar stone, several
  of which were hafted together in wooden handles
  to make tools.
• Although a microlithic tradition existed in
  Central Africa by about 40,000 years ago, such
  tools did not become common elsewhere until the
  Mesolithic.

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Microliths

• Microliths could be attached to arrow or other
  tool shafts by using melted resin as a binder.
• The Mesolithic peoples could make sickles,
  harpoons, arrows, knives, and daggers by fitting
  microliths into slots in wood, bone, or antler
  handles.

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Natufians

• The Natufians from Southwest Asia were the
  earliest Mesolithic people known to have stored
  plant foods.
• Basin-shaped depressions are preserved in the
  rocks outside of their homes.

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Natufians

• Lived at a time of dramatically changing
  climates in the region.
• Shallow lakes dried up, leaving just three in the
  Jordan River Valley.
• The plants best adapted to instability and
  seasonal aridity were annuals, including wild
  cereal grains and legumes.

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Natufians

• Natufians modified their subsistence practices
• Regularly fired the landscape to promote browsing
  by red deer and grazing by gazelles.
• Placed greater emphasis on the collection of wild
  seeds from annual plants that could be stored
  through the dry season.

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Neolithic

• The New Stone Age began about 11,000 years ago
  in Southwest Asia.
• The Neolithic revolution refers to the profound
  cultural changes which followed the domestication
  of plants and animals by peoples with stone-based
  technologies, beginning about 10,000 years ago

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The Neolithic and Cultural Change

• The cultural changes associated with the
  Neolithic took thousands of years to develop.
• Not everyone changed at the same rate or at the
  same time.

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The Neolithic and Cultural Change

• The source of all these changes was innovation
  a new idea, method, or device that gains
  widespread acceptance in society.
• (1) primary innovation the chance creation,
  invention, or discovery of a completely new idea,
  method, or device.
• (2) secondary innovation the deliberate
  application or modification of an existing idea,
  method, or device.

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Domestication

• An evolutionary process whereby humans modify,
  intentionally or unintentionally, the genetic
  makeup of plants or animals, sometimes to the
  extent that members of the population are unable
  to survive and/or reproduce without human
  assistance.
• Analysis of plant and animal remains at a site
  will indicate whether the occupants were food
  producers.

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Evidence of Early Plant Domestication

• Domesticated plants generally differ from their
  wild ancestors in the following ways
• Increased size of edible parts
• reduction or loss of natural means of seed
  dispersal
• reduction or loss of protective devices such as
  husks or distasteful chemical compounds that keep
  animals from eating them
• loss of delayed seed germination
• development of simultaneous ripening of the seed
  or fruit.

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Evidence of Early Animal Domestication

• Domestication also produced changes in the
  skeletal structure of some animals
• Most domesticated female sheep have no horns.
• The size of an animal or its parts can vary with
  domestication as seen in the smaller size of
  certain teeth of domesticated pigs compared to
  those of wild ones.

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Domestication of Maize

• Teosinte (A), compared to 5,500-year-old maize
  (B) and modern maize (C).
• Teosinte, the wild grass from highland Mexico
  from which maize originated, is far less
  productive and doesnt taste very good.
• Domestication transformed it into something
  highly desirable.

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Why Did the Change Take Place?
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Beginnings of Domestication

1. Food production was not the result of new
   discoveries about planting, people were very
   knowledgeable about plants and animals.
2. The switch to food production did not free people
   from hard work.
3. Food production is not necessarily a more secure
   means of subsistence than foraging.

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Oasis Theory

• Domestication began because the oasis attracted
  hungry animals.
• The animals were too thin to eat, so people began
  to fatten them up.
• Theory fell out of favor as studies of the
  origins of domestication were begun in the late
  1940s.

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The Fertile Crescent
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The Fertile Crescent

• Domestication began in the Fertile Crescent.
• 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,
  although wild plants and animals continued to be
  their major food sources.
• Over the next several millennia they became
  full-fl edged farmers, cultivating rye and wheat.
• By 10,300 years ago, others in the region were
  also growing crops.

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Domestication of Sheep

• Domestication of sheep resulted in evolutionary
  changes that created more wool.

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Areas of Early Plant and Animal Domestication

• Domestication also took place in the following
  areas
• Southeast Asia
• parts of the Americas (Central America, the
  Andean highlands, the tropical forests of South
  America, and eastern North America)
• northern China
• Africa

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Areas of Early Plant and Animal Domestication

• Southeast Asia is know for early rice cultivation
  and vegeculture the cultivation of domesticated
  root crops, such as yams and taro
• As plant domestication increased, so did
  societies based horticulture cultivation of
  crops carried out with simple hand tools such as
  digging sticks or hoes.

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Areas of Early Plant and Animal Domestication

• Domestication took place in such widely
  scattered areas as Southwest Asia (A1), Central
  Africa (A2), China (B1), Southeast Asia (B2),
  Mesoamerica (C1), South America (C2), and North
  America (C3).

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Nonedible Domesticates in Peru

• In coastal Peru, the earliest domesticates were
  the non-edible bottle gourd (like the one shown
  to the left) and cotton.
• They were used to make nets and floats to catch
  fish, which was an important source of food.

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Subsistence Trends in Mexicos Tehuacan Valley
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Chili Peppers in Mexico

• In Mexico, chili peppers have been a part of the
  diet for millennia (esp. as a flavor enhancer).
• This illustration from a 16th-century Aztec
  manuscript shows a woman threatening her child
  with punishment by being exposed to smoke from
  chili peppers.
• Chili smoke was also used as a kind of chemical
  weapon in warfare.

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Domestication Today

• When first begun, domestication was the outcome
  of traditional food-foraging activities.
• Today genetically engineered crops are being
  created to survive massive applications of
  herbicides and pesticides and not to produce
  viable seeds.

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What Were the Consequences of the Neolithic
Transition?
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Consequences of Domestication

• Crops become more productive and more vulnerable.
• Periodically population outstrips food supplies
  and people are apt to move into new regions.
• In this way, farming has often spread from one
  region to another, as into Europe from Southwest
  Asia.

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The Spread of Food Production

• Although domestication increases productivity, it
  also increases instability.
• Varieties with the highest yields become the
  focus of human attention, while other varieties
  are less valued and ultimately ignored.
• Farmers become dependent on a rather narrow range
  of resources, compared to the wide range utilized
  by food foragers.

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The Spread of Food Production

• From Southwest Asia, for instance, farming spread
  northwestward eventually to all of Europe,
  westward to North Africa, and eastward to India.
• Domesticated variants also spread from China and
  Southeast Asia westward.
• Sorghum and other domesticates also spread from
  West Africa, to the southeast, creating the
  modern far-reaching
  distribution of speakers of Bantu languages.

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The Spread of Food Production

• Those who brought crops to new locations brought
  other things as well, including languages,
  beliefs, and new alleles for human gene pools.

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Neolithic Culture Jericho

• The best known Neolithic site is Jericho, a
  farming community in the Jordan River Valley of
  Palestine.
• Excavations revealed the remains of a sizable
  farming community inhabited as early as 10,350
  years ago.
• Crops could be grown almost continuously, due to
  the presence of a spring and the rich soils of an
  Ice Age lake that had dried up some 3,000 years
  earlier.
• Flood-borne deposits originating in the Judean
  highlands to the west regularly renewed soil
  fertility.

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Neolithic Culture Jericho

• To protect against floods, mudflows, and
  invaders, the people of Jericho built massive
  walls of stone around it.
• Inside the walls (6 1/2 feet wide and 12 feet
  high), as well as a large rock-cut ditch (27 feet
  wide and 9 feet deep), an estimated 400 to 900
  people lived in houses of mud brick with
  plastered floors arranged around courtyards.
• A stone tower that would have taken 100 people
  104 days to build was located inside one corner
  of the wall.

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Neolithic Culture Jericho

• A cemetery reflects the sedentary life of these
  early people nomadic groups rarely buried their
  dead in a single central location.
• Close contact between farmers of Jericho and
  other villages is indicated by common features in
  art, ritual, use of prestige goods, and burial
  practices.
• Other evidence of trade consists of obsidian and
  turquoise from Sinai as well as marine shells
  from the coast, all discovered inside the walls
  of Jericho.

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Neolithic Material Culture Technology

• People developed scythes, forks, hoes, and plows
  to replace their simple digging sticks.
• Pestles and mortars were used for preparation of
  grain.
• Plows were redesigned when domesticated cattle
  became available for use as draft animals.

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Neolithic Material Culture Pottery

• Pottery vessels could be used for storing small
  grain, seeds, and other materials.
• Pottery was also used for cooking, pipes, ladles,
  lamps, and other objects.
• Some cultures used large vessels for disposal of
  the dead.
• Widespread use of pottery is a good indication
  of a sedentary community.

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Neolithic Material culture Pottery

• This pottery vessel from Turkey was made around
  7,600 years ago. Pigs were under domestication as
  early as 10,500 to 11,000 years ago in
  southeastern Turkey.

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Neolithic Material Culture Housing

• Some Neolithic peoples constructed houses of
  wood, while others built elaborate shelters made
  of stone, sun-dried brick, or poles plastered
  together with mud or clay.
• Although permanent housing frequently goes along
  with food production, there is evidence that
  housing could exist without food production.
• On the northwestern coast of North America,
  people lived in houses made of heavy planks hewn
  from cedar logs, yet their food consisted
  entirely of wild plants.

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Neolithic Material Culture Clothing

• For the first time in history, clothing was made
  of woven textiles.
• Raw materials came from
• flax and cotton from farming
• wool from domesticated sheep
• silk from silk worms
• spindle and loom from the human mind

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Neolithic Architecture Stonehenge

• Sometimes Neolithic villages created communal
  works. Stonehenge, England, dates back to about
  4,500 years ago. Its construction relates to the
  new attitudes toward the earth and forces of
  nature associated with food production.

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Neolithic Social Structure

• relatively egalitarian with minimal division of
  labor
• some development of new and more specialized
  social roles
• villages seem to have been made up of several
  households, each providing for most of its own
  needs
• the organizational needs of society beyond the
  household level were probably met by kinship
  groups

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The Neolithic and Human Biology

• the teeth of Neolithic peoples show less wear
• possible evidence of early dentistry (more dental
  decay?) in Pakistan
• the bones of Neolithic peoples are less robust,
  and osteoarthritis (the result of stressed joint
  surfaces) is more common

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The Neolithic and Human Biology

• increased mal-nutrition (reliance on a few crops)
  and possibility of periodic famine
• increased sedentism (permanently living in one
  place) created hygiene and sanitation issues
• diseases acquired from domesticated animals

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Diseases Acquired From Domesticated Animals
Human Disease Animal with Most Closely Related Pathogen
Measles Cattle (rinderpest)
Tuberculosis Cattle
Smallpox Cattle (cowpox) or other livestock with related pox viruses
Influenza Pigs, ducks
Pertussis (whooping cough) Pigs, dogs
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The Legacy of the Neolithic

• Led to the diversification of cultures (not
  simply progress or improvement)
• Some societies practiced horticulture
  cultivation of crops carried out with simple hand
  tools such as digging sticks or hoes.
• Others practiced agriculture intensive farming
  of large plots of land, employing fertilizers,
  plows, and/or extensive irrigation.
• Still others adopted pastoralism a reliance on
  herds of domestic animals for their subsistence.