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Explore the different ways societies obtain food and how technology and environment influence these strategies. Learn about food collection, horticulture, pastoralism, agriculture, and industrialization. Discover how humans adapt to their environments culturally and biologically. Understand the characteristics of food-collecting societies and the concept of carrying capacity. Dive into optimal foraging theory and the historical shift from food collection to food production. Study the impacts of food production on population, sedentism, division of labor, and health.
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Chapter 7 Making a Living
What We Will Learn • What are the different ways by which societies get their food? • How do technology and environment influence food getting strategies? • How have humans adapted to their environments over the ages?
Five Major Food Gathering Strategies • Food collection: collecting vegetation, hunting animals, and fishing. • Horticulture: plant cultivation with simple tools and small plots of land, relying solely on human power. • Pastoralism: keeping domesticated animals and using their products as a major food source.
Five Major Food Gathering Strategies • Agriculture: horticulture using animal or mechanical power and some form of irrigation. • Industrialization: production of food through complex machinery.
Human Adaptation Humans adapt to climates in two ways: • Culturally - dietary patterns, levels of activities • Biologically - changes in the body
Food Gathering and the Environment • Most anthropologists agree that the environment sets limits on the form that food-getting patterns may take. Cultures help people adapt to inhospitable environments.
Characteristics of Food Collecting Societies • Low population densities. • Usually nomadic or semi nomadic rather than sedentary. • Basic social unit is the family or band. • Contemporary food-collecting peoples occupy the remote and marginally useful areas of the earth.
Carrying Capacity • The maximum number of people a given society can support, given the available resources.
Optimal Foraging Theory • A theory that foragers look for those species of plants and animals that will maximize their caloric intake for the time spent hunting and gathering foods.
Food Collecting • A form of subsistence that relies on the procurement of animal and plant resources found in the natural environment (aka foraging and hunting and gathering).
Question • _______ is a basic form of plant cultivation using simple tools, small plots of land, and relies on human power. • Pastoralism • Horticulture • Food collection • Agriculture
Answer: b • Horticulture is a basic form of plant cultivation using simple tools, small plots of land, and relies on human power.
Question • The gathering of wild vegetation and the hunting of small game is the strategy of: • horticulture. • pastoralism. • agriculture. • food collection.
Answer: d • The gathering of wild vegetation and the hunting of small game is the strategy of food collection.
Neolithic RevolutionFood Producing Societies • Transition from food collection to food production began 10,000 years ago • Humans began to cultivate crops and keep herds of animals. • Humans were able to produce food rather than rely only on what nature produced.
Ju/’hoansi • Despite popular misconceptions, foragers such as the Ju/’hoansi do not live on the brink of starvation.
Inuit • To survive in their harsh environment, the Inuit from Nunavut, Canada, have had to develop a number of creative hunting strategies, including the recent adoption of snowmobiles.
Changes Resulting From Food Production • Increased population. • Populations became more sedentary. • Stimulated a greater division of labor. • Decline in overall health reduced the life expectancy from 26 to 19 years.
Why Food Production Led to Declining Health • Foragers had a more balanced diet (plants and animal proteins). • Farmers ran the risk of malnutrition or starvation if the crops failed. • Increased population brought people into greater contact and made everyone more susceptible to parasitic and infectious diseases.
Question • It is not until ________, some 10, 000 years ago, that human beings began producing food by horticulture or animal husbandry. • the industrial revolution • the French revolution • the neolithic revolution • the aquaculture revolution
Answer: c • It is not until the neolithic revolution some 10, 000 years ago, that human beings began producing food by horticulture or animal husbandry.
Horticulture • The simplest type of farming, which involves the use of basic hand tools rather than plows or machinery driven by animals or engines. • Horticulturalists produce low yields and generally do not have sufficient surpluses to develop extensive market systems. • The land is neither irrigated nor enriched by the use of fertilizers.
Shifting Cultivation (Swidden, Slash and Burn) • A form of plant cultivation in which seeds are planted in the fertile soil prepared by cutting and burning the natural growth; relatively short periods of cultivation are followed by longer periods of fallow.
Pastoralism • Involves keeping domesticated herd animals and is found in areas of the world that cannot support agriculture because of inadequate terrain, soils, or rainfall. • Associated with geographic mobility, because herds must be moved periodically to exploit seasonal pastures.
Pastoralism: 2 Movement Patterns • Transhumance • Some of the men move livestock seasonally to different pastures while the women, children, and other men remain in permanent settlements. • Nomadism • There are no permanent villages, the whole social unit of men, women, and children moves the livestock to new pastures.
Tibetan Yak Herders • Tibetan yak herders must movetheir animals periodically to ensureadequate pasturage.
Social Functions of Cattle • The use of livestock by pastoralists not only for food and its byproducts but also for purposes such as marriage, religion, and social relationships. • Stock friendship • A gift of livestock from one man to another to strengthen their friendship.
Agriculture • Uses technology such as irrigation, fertilizers, and mechanized equipment. • Produces high yields and supports large populations. • Associated with permanent settlements, cities, and high levels of labor specialization.
Draft Animals • The use of draft animals, as practiced by this farmer from Hoi An, Vietnam, involves a more complex form of crop production than swidden farming.
Agriculture: Costs of Greater Productivity • Can support many times more people per unit of land than the horticulturalist. • Agriculturalists must devote vast numbers of hours of hard work prepare the land. • Intensive agriculture requires a much higher investment of capital.
Terraced Farming • This terraced form of farming, as found in Indonesia, involves a long-term commitment to the land and a considerable expenditure of labor.
Peasantry • Rural peoples, usually on the lowest rung of society’s ladder, who provide urban inhabitants with farm products but have little access to wealth or political power.
Question • Because of its reliance on animal power and technology, ________ differs from horticulture, and is a more intensive and efficient system. • horticulture • nomadism • agriculture • pastoralism
Answer: c • Because of its reliance on animal power and technology, agriculture differs from horticulture, and is a more intensive and efficient system.
Industrialization • A process resulting in the economic change from home production of goods to large-scale mechanized factory production.
Ecosystems • This Kayapo woman from Brazil knows not to kill the foraging ants in her garden because they actually weed and fertilize her crops.
Industrialized Food Production • Uses more powerful sources of energy. • Requires: • High levels of technology (such as tractors and combines) • Mobile labor force • Complex system of markets
