Learning about the development

of farming through archaeology

Before they switched to farming, humans got all their food from wild plants and animals in their environment.

• They hunted wild game like deer, wild pigs, and large birds.

• They collected wild fruits, berries, and nuts.

• They fished and collected shellfish and crabs.

• They gathered wild tubers (root vegetables, like potatoes and carrots), vegetables, and grains.

For thousands of years humans lived like this. But then, around 10,000 years ago humans started to domesticate plants and animals and adopt a farming way of life.

WHY????

• Maybe farming was easier and less time consuming then hunting and gathering

• Perhaps farming was more reliable then hunting and gathering and promised food all year round

• Or, maybe farming just provided more food for a greater number of people

• Farming definitely wasn’t easier then hunting and gathering. Early farmers would have had a very rough time and were highly dependent on the weather. If a drought came, they couldn’t simply walk to a different area like hunter gatherers.

This is partly why the development of farming spreads very slowly at first!

• Also, from looking at human bones archaeologists have found that farmers were NOT healthier then hunter gatherers. They now lived in the same place instead of moving around and so, unlike hunter gatherers, they couldn’t move when an area got dirty and full of waste products. This caused a lot more disease.

Another reason farming spreads slowly….

• Archaeologists have found that in the late Paleolithic, certain regions had grown a great deal in population so that this was likely putting a strain on the naturally available resources. This is probably what pushed humans towards farming.

What are some things that are necessary for farming?

TOOLS

SEEDS

WATER

HARNESSESFENCES

ANIMALS

FIELDS

How do you think each of these things would be reflected in the archaeological record? In other words, what would archaeologists find, hundreds or even thousands of years later?

FIELDS?

Ancient plow marks

Animals?

And if you’re lucky… SEEDS!!Fences?

Post holes

Tools?

Trace Fossils

Trace Fossil

Actual Remains Fossils

Artifacts

As you have learned, there are many areas that independently developed agriculture. Which one was first?

The Near East

What does domestication mean?

To train plants and animals to be useful to people.

By careful selection of breeding populations which can over time change the behaviors of the organism.

Domestication changes how plants and animals physically grow so that, over time, they end up looking different from their wild cousins.

More for grinding into flour!

When archaeologists find animal or plant remains at a potential early agriculture site, they first need to determine whether they are wild or domesticated.

How do they do that?

By comparing features on bones from modern domesticated and wild animals.

Over time, archaeologists have been able to figure out the sequence of changes that take place in the features of the plant or animal.

What types of plants were domesticated in the Near East?

Barley and Wheat Lentils

Muskmelon (now developed into cantaloupe, honeydew, etc)

Chickpeas (garbanzo beans)

New Tools in the Neolithic (“New Stone Age”)

Pottery

Grinding StonesSickles and other harvesting tools

The domestication of plants and animals dramatically changed the way humans interacted with their environment.

Now, instead of merely living within their environment, humans were managing it.

Domesticated animals and plants now depend on humans for their survival.

What are some ways, other then farming, that we manage our environment today?

• Planting flowers simply for their beauty

• Growing plants where they do not belong (like Colorado Blue Spruce here in Dearborn)

• Designating certain areas to remain “wild”- like the National Parks

• Keeping animals as pets and breeding them for certain traits (think of all the different kinds of dogs there are today and how different they look!!)

• In fact, everything around us in cities and suburbs is “managed” by humans

Even though population growth was a major CAUSE of the adoption of agriculture, it was also the main RESULTS.

As a result of farming…

1) More food is produced for more people

2) But more people are needed to do all the work required

So people began having more children to fill this demand.

Furthermore, hunter gatherers cannot have too many children at a time when people are continuously moving and dying young. This isn’t as great a problem for farmers so population starts to grow rapidly!

Çatalhöyük: A Neolithic City in Turkey

The oldest known city.

It shows evidence of great farm support for food supplies.

Excavations at Çatalhöyük

Archeologists get down and dirty :)