In this unit’s text, we learned about modernization of society and how agriculture permitted nomadic hunt-and-gather groups to become stabilized and centralized in one location. The text and supporting video clips introduced both positive and negative anthropological effects of the rise of agriculture. Three positive outcomes include stabilization, improved nutrition, and food surplus. For each of these positive instances, there is an alternate and negative impact as well: habitat destruction, feast and famine cycles, and health concerns. This essay will briefly expound on each positive outcome and its counterpart, and will relate the sustainable agrarian achievements of the people of the Gamo Highlands to these effects.
The first positive consequence of agriculture is the stabilization it has allowed humanity. For many years, societies were based around the game its members hunted for food. For example, Native Americans once relied upon buffalo as a main source of meat. As buffalo do not stay in one location, the Native American people were forced to follow the buffalo, migrating with them wherever the beasts went, in order to maintain this valuable food source. Upon the introduction of agriculture, on the other hand, people were able and required to stay in one place in order to tend the crops. This encouraged the formation of settlements and reduction of nomadic lifestyles, which in turn triggered healthier and more consistent nutrition.
While hunt-and-gather societies generally had a constant source of food from the game and nuts, seeds, and berries they consumed, these things still did not provide adequate nutrition for them. Members of these societies lacked nutrients found in crops unavailable to them...
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...crops to find the most productive varieties, the naturally-occurring diversity provides more protection against insect and climate harm, as each crop will adapt to the environment it is in. If people take only what is needed from the environment, not more, this will ensure the retention of the world and its countless societal groups further into the future than relying only on modern technology, which in fact is less productive and more harmful. What the people of the Gamo Highland region are teaching the rest of the world is that there is an important connection between the self and the environment, and in order for the landscape to be the most productive and helpful to the people in it, this relationship must be closely maintained. This will help alleviate the negative aspects of agriculture, enhance the positive outcomes, and overall improve the standard of life.
Crops can kill thousands and build millions. During the Potato Famine, an infamous crop failure, “1845 to 1947, more than one million people died of starvation or emigrated. Additionally, over 50,000 people died of diseases: typhus, scurvy, dysentery” (American University). For thousands of years crops have fueled large societies allowing for mass population growth and human expansion. But the transition from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to an agricultural reliance bered many consequences along with its pros. Switching to an agricultural way of life provided health issues among humans, drastic changes socially and culturally, as well as ecological implications. This paper examines the changes accumulated by this transition including its enduring
The understanding and expertise of cultivating food promoted advancement of human society, meaning that cultures were able to last longer and better.
In P. Bion and Agnes Estioko-Griffin’s work, “Woman the Hunter: The Agta,” foraging—or hunting and gathering of wild food resources—is said to be the main mode of production for the Agta, a group of people that are located in...
Agriculture plays an enormous part in having a functioning society. The farming fields in the
This research plans to compare and contrast the similarities and differences in agricultural development between the Jericho Valley,in present day Palestine, and that of the Andes Mountains. There are several aspects to compare in these regions. First and perhaps most obvious is the environmental differences of these regions as well as the ecological changes in each region has itself undergone. Closely linked to these environments is the native biological species, how these native species have been domesticated, as well as looking at what crop species have been introduced to the regions, and their effect on the native species. After explaining the differences in climate of the two regions it is important to understand who was doing the farming in these areas. This will be looked at in terms of cultural evolution, groups' social approach to farming and how that affects land use and technical procedure.
Agriculture has been around for hundreds of years. With its negative effects on humanity, agriculture has greatly affected the environment. Many archeologists believe that adoption of Agriculture was not an improvement but a disaster for humans in many ways. Jared Diamond, the author of the article called “The worst mistake in the history of the human race” argues that hunter-gatherers were better off than the farmers. In a way agriculture is believed to cause many problems for humans such as sexual inequality, deep class division, changed their diet which later led to poor health and diseases.
In the article “Worst Mistake in History of Human Race,” by Jared Diamond (1987), he discusses how the conversion a hunter- gatherer based society to an agricultural based one was a huge mistake. At first it was believed and is still believed by many that it has been one of the best decisions made by humans but he goes on to discuss how it is not and the disadvantages it has caused.
There are multiple subsistence strategies which include foraging, horticulture, pastoralism, agriculture and industrial societies. People who live in foraging societies typically move according to where they find the sources they need to hunt, fish and gather wild plants. These communities also keep a small group size as it allows them to forage easier for a smaller group of people. In agriculture societies, people produce food by farming, irrigation systems and fertilization. This allowed for larger societies as more food and land were able to be obtained. On our trip to the Milwaukee Public Museum I saw the Hopi Pueblo’s and they portrayed an agricultural society. They ate foods such as corn, watermelon, pumpkin, squash, beans and a variety of nuts and berries. Since these foods were mostly available by farming, we could imply that they used many tools to allow them to farm and harvest. Agriculture falls into the category of food-producing societies because the methods that are included in it represent people actually producing the food instead of simply gathering it. This society group includes horticulture and pastoralism as well. Horticulture is a small community that uses simple hand tools to grow crops unlike agriculture where irrigation is used. Pastoralism is breeding domesticated animals so in other words raising cattle, goats, and other animals. The Masai tribe in Africa are perfect examples of a food-producing pastoralism society as they breed their own animals because their diet consists of mostly meat. In the Milwaukee Public Museum, the Wandorobo tribe represented a food- foraging society as they hunt and gather for their food. They also use foraging combined with trading and bartering to exchange their food as a way of living. Lastly there are industrial societies which includes mass production of food involving machinery rather than human labor. In today’s day and age this is increasing as technology is becoming more prominent. Along with
Agriculture is the science and practice of producing crops and livestock. The primary aim of agriculture is to use the land to produce more abundantly to feed and clothe the world at the same time protecting it from deterioration or misuse. Humans had to improve agriculture as they became more dependent on food, creating a solitary evolutionary connection between plants and animals (Campbell and Reece, 2001). In this day and age, so many people have forgotten the authentic premises of survival. It is easy for some to believe that the grocery stores produce food and clothing is produced by shopping centers. These inaccurate presumptions are being made due to the lack of knowledge of how agriculture truly works. There are also significant differences in the levels of understanding between rural and urban communities.
The blessing and curse of the Agricultural Revolution is advocated with its augmentation and dissemination. Taking the stipulative definition of “blessing” and “curse” from the original premise, one can only superimpose the layman’s terms of “negative” and “positive”. Upon examination of the two classifications within the Neolithic Period and ancient Mesopotamian civilization one can confirm the premise. Therefore, the agriculture revolution was a blessing and a curse for humanity. Human society began to emerge in the Neolithic Period or the New Stone Age. This new age began around 9,000 B.C.E. by the development of agriculture in the region surrounding the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and what is commonly referred to as “The Fertile Crescent” located in West Asia.1 The very development of agriculture had benefited humans by no longer having to move about in search of wild game and plants. Unencumbered by nomadic life humans found little need to limit family size and possessions and settled in a single location for many years. One negative aspect of this settling is that the population increased so much so that wild food sources were no longer sufficient to support large groups. Forced to survive by any means necessary they discovered using seeds of the most productive plants and clearing weeds enhanced their yield.2 This also lead humans to develop a wider array of tools far superior to the tools previously used in the Paleolithic Period or Old Stone Age. The spread of the Agricultural Revolution in the Neolithic Period also cultivated positive aspects by creating connections with other cultures and societies. Through these connections they exchanged knowledge, goods, and ideas on herding and farming.3 Another major positive aspec...
Establishing an adequate supply of food is historically one of the fundamental challenges facing mankind. The modern food infrastructure employed by contemporary society is rooted in the creation and innovation of food production. Its effective utilization decreases the level of societal labor contribution required and discourages food shortage trepidation amongst individuals. It is hard to fathom given the current status of our society massive agricultural-industrial complex that the hunter-gatherer organization of society dominated for more than 99 percent of our existence (Fagan 2007: 126). The hunter-gatherer population was characterized by their primary subsistence method, which involved the direct procurement of edible plants and animals from the wild. The primary methods employed were foraging and hunting, which were conducted without any significant recourse to the domestication of either food source (Fagan 2007: 129). Food production is presumed to have emerged approximately 12,000 years ago as a system of “deliberate cultivation of cereal grasses, edible root plants, and animal domestication” (Fagan 2007: 126). The pronounced change from hunting and gathering to agriculture and domestication can be simplistically designated the Agricultural or Neolithic Revolution (Pringle 1998). The catalytic developments of the Neolithic Revolution mark a major turning point in the history of humankind. The resulting animal and plant domestication established the foundation on which modern civilization was built.
Before the industrial revolution, villagers practiced communal farming, in which residents worked together to farm on a large lot of land. Part of the land was divided up into three different crop fields. One for wheat or rye, one for oats or beans, and one for fallow. The fourth section of land was left to give livestock a place to graze, plant wild plants, and store firewood for the winter. The Enclosure Movement helped propel the shift from agriculture to industry. With this movement, agriculture was used for commercial practices and not so much as a way to feed single families. Before the start the Enclosure Movement, villages practiced communal farming in which the land and what was grown and raised on it was shared between the residents. However, this way of farming changed as effects of the Enclosure Movement made their way into the villages. Communal farms were divided up into single-family farms, with each family receiving and equal share of land. The owners of the land were rich families. These owners lease the land to farmers. During the enclosure movement, the land owners wrote new leases to individual families. These leases usually lasted 19 years and every family that lived in the village had the right to get a lease. People who got very small farms could not survive on their own without the right to use the common land, of which there was little to no land because it had been divided up. Therefo...
Agriculture is quite possibly the most important advancement and discovery that humanity has made. It produces the one thing that we need the most: food. It has been around since 9500 BC, and can be the oldest sign of mankind’s acumen and the development and evolving of our minds and creations. Agriculture has been mastered throughout hundreds of years and is one of our most important resources on Earth, along with water and fossil fuels. Although the older farming methods from ancient times seem somewhat mediocre and barbaric, they were very ingenious and advanced for that time period. Over thousands of years, we have improved the way agriculture is used, how land is cultivated, the various techniques of farming and irrigation, and the tools and mechanics used. Numerous things that we see as aboriginal today, such as using a hand plow, were extremely contemporary in ancient times, and played key roles in the development of man and society, since quick labor was not abundant before this time. We are now extremely advanced in agriculture and irrigation and the tools used to farm and grow and harvest crops. We have learned from our past and ancestors how to grow and evolve in our methods and have advanced forward greatly.
So overall, Agriculture is playing a very important role in changing the lifestyle of different people. Agriculture might have made everything easy for us but it still has its cons. We see the effects of agriculture and how it affects the lives of other species and the environment.
Today agriculture is the livelihood of most poor underdeveloped nations. This communal life blood provides a majority of the population with a source of employment, nourishment and income. It is considered to be an invaluable skill, that is taught down from generation to generation along with a sense of respect for the environment. However as a nation begins to undergo development, so do their food production systems. The country's newfound development causes significant restructuring of their agricultural production practices. This restructuring leads to poor environmental practices, and adverse agriculture methods. Increased economic development/production negatively affects a country's environmental and agricultural health.