Developing agriculture and technology/Agricultural, pastoral, and foraging societies, and their demographic characteristics
Foundations: c. 8000 B.C.E.–600 C.E.
Major Developments
- Developing agriculture and technology Agricultural, pastoral, and foraging societies, and their demographic characteristics (Include Africa, the Americas, and Southeast Asia.)
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- Foraging societies – small groups of people traveled – climate/food availability
- Bad - climate, disease, famine, natural disasters
- No permanent shelters
- Limit to how much land can feed
- Mammals, fished, gathered
- Organization
- Some had chiefs, leaders, religious figures
- Coordination needed for hunting large game – later used for warfare
- Worshipped deities – buried dead 100,000 years ago – burial sites
- Sacrifices, ceremonies
- Expression through art – art 32,000 years old, flutes 30,000 years old
- Gender division of labor
- Physical differences – men hunted, made war, heavy labor
- Women gathered, prepared food, maintained home, children
- Roles not seen as superior, just different - debatable
- Pastoral societies – domestication of animals
- Mountain regions, insufficient rainfall
- Small scale agriculture to add to milking
- Extended family important
- Women w/ few rights, men controlled food production
- Power based on size of herd
- Couldn’t settle needed to look for food for herd
- Seasonal migration
- Difficult to become “civilized”
- * Began to experiment w/ plants/seeds
- Mix animal husbandry w/ plant domestication
- By accident – latrines sprout veggies, yummy
- Women key role
- Key points – one didn’t disappear
- In one area, could have shifting cultivation + migratory farmers + forage + hunt/fish + nomadic pastoralism
- Polytheism –
- afterlife – matter – neither created or destroyed
- energy > energy
- from animism – spirits in anything
- anthropologists – need control over fate – petition gods
- Foraging societies – small groups of people traveled – climate/food availability
- Emergence of agriculture and technological change
- Neolithic Revolution/Agricultural Revolution – 8000-3000 BCE
- Nomadic > agricultural > town > city
- W/ good soil, water source + cultivate plants – could build homes
- Domesticated animals/simple tools
- Was it a revolution?
- Long period of time
- At different times
- but…no one can argue immense changes
- Psychological Issues
- Shared land vs. ownership, people come on your land - intruders
- Food Surplus
- Time to make tools, dig an irrigation ditch, philosopher, religious leader
- One farms for 100, you can individualize labor
- Armies, towns, writing, art, experiment, technologies – specialization
- Government and religion emerge to keep life orderly
- Organize irrigation efforts which increases scope
- Calendars, pottery containers, baskets, storehouses
- Domestication – dog first – companionship, security hunting
- Later goat – both during Paleolithic – milk/meat
- Advantages of some societies on domestic options
- Regional food
- Central Africa - plantains, bananas, yams
- Americas – maize, beans, squash
- India – millet, barley
- Migratory vs. Slash and burn
- Ashes kept soil fertile
- Replaced with shifting – planting, fallow
- Changes – irrigation, mixing crop types
- Fermentation of alcoholic beverages – end of Neolithic
- Neolithic Revolution/Agricultural Revolution – 8000-3000 BCE
- Nature of village settlements
- Must be near water – commerce, barter
- Stay in same place
- Sense of unity, create cultural traditions
- People tied to land – property as ownership
- Role of women pre-farming – food gatherers – first to plant/harvest crops
- Men were hunters
- Gender-related differences – women lost status
- Political, economic lives controlled by men
- Community leaders, warriors, priests, traders, crafts
- Patrilineal/patrilocal – tracing decent based on male line/husband’s home more important
- Political, economic lives controlled by men
- Needed to work together –formation of communities
- Defense against invaders
- A family alone can’t create complex irrigation systems
- Self-sufficient, but some trade occurred
- Religious rituals become more complex – greater variety of gods and goddesses
- Forces of nature + spirits of departed ancestors
- Built permanent sites of worship – shrines, temples, megaliths
- Creation of cities
- Offer protection for defense
- Centers for trading
- Different skills/talents live together
- Major cities
- Jericho – Jordan River
- Catal Huyuk – Turkey
- Danpo – China
- No longer can rely on oral communication – need writing
- Keep records
- Pass on information
- Transfer information
- Sumerians first 3500-3000 BCE, Incas civilized without
- Impact of agriculture on the environment
- Land – land reconfigured to fit needs of humans
- Diverts water
- Clears land for farming
- Roads built
- Stones unearthed for buildings/monuments
- Animal kingdom
- Animals as food, clothing, beast of burden – oxen
- Increase food production
- Animals as food, clothing, beast of burden – oxen
- Overfarmed – depleted land of fertility
- Move on to new land – sometimes called slash and burn
- Land – land reconfigured to fit needs of humans
- Introduction of key stages of metal use
- Hard granite stones – farming tools – hoes, plows – farm tools priority
- Plow key prerequisite of society?
- Allowed for food surplus
- Plow key prerequisite of society?
- Pottery for cooking
- Weaving for baskets/nets
- Complex/comfortable clothing
- Wheels for carts sails for boats
- Combine copper with tin to make bronze
- Weapons, tools – Bronze Age
- Iron follows
- Neolithic Age – New Stone Age – ends with metalworking
- 6600 BCE – Copper used in Europe, Asia
- Metalurghy – extracting from raw ore and metalwork – crafting – quite difficult
- Jewelry predates 6400 BCE, but tools not efficient until later
- 3500-3000 BCE – Bronze from copper/tin discovered in Middle East, Balkans, Southeast Asia – later part Neolithic Age – Bronze Age
- Americas and Asia never had a bronze age – tin scarce
- Scarcity of tin pushed need for international trade
- 1500-1200 BCE – Iron Age – Hittites
- Spread to Europe in 1000 BCE, Africa in 500 BCE
- Possible to cultivate hard packed soil/more land
- Wave of invasions from outside Mesopotamia
- Hard granite stones – farming tools – hoes, plows – farm tools priority
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Subject:
US History [1]
Subject X2:
US History [1]