Strayer - Chapter Two

1. Strayer - Chapter Two Revolutions in Agriculture

2. How does the Agricultural Revolution fit into World History narrative? • Second great global pattern in human history • First = settlement of the earth • Began around 12,000 years ago • Agricultural Revolution = Neolithic period • Neolithic = “New Stone Age”

3. What was the Agriculture Revolution? • Time of deliberate domestication of certain plants and animals • Domestication = Selective breeding for desirable traits • Period that replaced Paleolithic hunting & gathering era • Took roughly 10,000 years to go global

4. When/Where did the Ag. Rev. Begin? • Developed independently in widely scattered parts of world • All roughly at the same time! • Between 4,000-12,000 years ago • End of the Ice Age (11,000 years ago) jumpstarted it • Created favorable conditions for plants • Brought about animal extinctions H/G relied on • Needed to look for other food sources • Coincided with the migration of Homo Sapiens around the world

5. What developments helped make Neolithic Rev. possible? • Technological improvements: • Sickle, mortar and pestle, granaries (storage pits) • Improved natural understandings: • Slash and burn techniques by Amazon people encouraged growth of favored plants • Established gender roles • Female expertise at collecting wild plants • Male expertise at hunting/collecting wild animals • Impending food crisis • Brought on by abandoning of nomadic lifestyles • Presence of plants/animals able to be domesticated • Varied distribution of plants/animals led to different versions of Ag. Rev.

6. How did Agriculture go Global? • Communication of neighboring groups • Growing populations due to agriculture needed more open land • Often resulted in conflict with resident hunter/gatherers • Spread of agriculture also spread root languages • Indo-European languages originated in Turkey…now cover from India-W. Europe • Chinese languages moved in to SE Asia • Bantu-based languages across Africa

7. What were the historical effects of Agriculture? • 1. Rapidly growing populations • 10,000 years ago: around 6 million people • 5,000 years ago: around 50 million people • Beginning of Common Era: around 250 million people • 2. Rise of permanent settlements • Eventually led to the creation of cities, states, empires • 3. Introduction of animal borne diseases • Ex: Small pox, chicken pox, plague, etc. • 4. Development of written languages • 5. Environmental degradation • Rise of human effort to change and “subdue the earth” • 6. Alteration of numerous plants and animals • Many domesticated plants and animals came to rely on humans • 7. Loss of hunter/gatherer peoples/skills • Only isolated peoples resisted • 8. Technological Innovation • Metallurgy, pottery, textiles, etc.

8. What variations existed in different Agricultural Revolutions? • Fertile Crescent (Tigris & Euphrates river – Southwest Asia): • Large #’s of plants/animals able to be domesticated • Rev. was brought on by cold spell between 11,000-9500 BCE • Threatened wild plants and animals which nearby peoples relied on • Solution to counter this was domestication • Only took 500 years! • Domestication = much larger settlements, cultural/religious developments • Present-day Saharan Africa • Animals preceded plants in domestication here • Opposite of everywhere else • First to domesticate cattle and donkeys

10. Variations (cont.) • Sub-Saharan Africa • Possessed many crops able to be domesticated • Limited due to them being highly scattered • Resulted in less productive agriculture than fertile crescent • Americas • Lack of domesticatable animals • Resulted in a lack of protein, manure, and animal power found elsewhere • Grew to be more dependent on hunting fishing • Took much longer for agriculture to fully replace hunting/gathering • Thousands of years to turn corn from teosinthe (a grass) in to harvestable cob • North/South orientation made agricultural advances more difficult to spread

12. What social variations existed in Ag. Societies? • Chiefdoms • Introduced inequality to the world • Chiefs relied on generosity, charisma, or ritual status to govern • Emerged in Mesopotamia in 6,000 BCE • Introduced distinction between commoner and elite • First time power was based on birth, not ability • Agricultural Village Societies • Most common form of early agriculture • Based on equality and had no rulers • Typically grouped on kinship • Example: Catalhuyuk, in modern-day Turkey • Gender equality • Dead buried under houses, new houses built on top • No streets, shared rooftop corridors

13. Recreation of CatalHuyuk – modern-day Turkey

14. Social Variations (cont.) • Pastoral Societies • Arose in areas where farming was difficult/impossible • Practiced “animal husbandry” • Moved often to sustain them • Known as herders, nomads, or pastoralists • Domestication of horses in 4,000 BCE enabled spread of pastoralists across Central Asia • Grew into powerful military clans which dominated region for thousands of years • Did not emerge in Americas (no large animals) • Conflicts between Pastoralists and Agrarian Societies (farmers) is major theme in Afro-Eurasian history • Pastoralists attracted to grazing lands, wealth, and food products