Anthropology

3. The first society that is known as the first agriculturalists of the world is the Late Pleistocene in the Natufian culture in the Middle East. About 12,900 to 11,600 years ago, the conditions were too cold and dry for wild cereal to grow; the Natufians had to rely mainly on wild barley and wheat for their subsistence. During this period, the Natufians started to gained some measure of control over these wild crops, shifted from natural to artificial selection. In Syria and Turkey, emmer, einkorn and lentils were also cultivated. The shift to an agricultural way of life was considered a revolution in Jordan and Iraq. A substantial faunal assemblage of sheep bones dated to 10,600 B.P. was found in the Zagros Mountains. More interestingly, these bone structures showed that these animals were slaughtered when they were young. This level of consistency in population profile of animal species proves the level of control of human over animals. The animals are kept, controlled and tended by people.

The second society I want to discuss about is the agriculture in East and Central Asia. The earliest evidence of this is in China from the Zengpiyan Cave site where they found a large portion of young pigs’ bones. These pigs are reported to be kept and tended since their canine teeth are smaller than those in a wild pig. The appearance of rice grains started 12,000 years ago from the middle Yangtze River in central China. This shift to rice-based agriculture is considered an economic revolution. The development of spikelets helped creating the next generation of wild rice plants, which later on helped making rice harvesting more efficient by having rice grains not fall to the ground as in their wild state.

The third society that also had a shift to agriculture is in Europe. The subsistence focus in Southeast Europe was on wild oats, barley, peas and lentils which dated 13,000 years ago in Greece and Bulgaria. In Western Europe, through examining the bones, researchers found a diet rich in fish and marine mammal. Agriculture started to migrate to Europe since farmers in the Middle East physically migrated into Europe about 7,500 years ago bringing their crops, cultures and replacing the European hunter-gatherer populations. Cattle was reported to be domesticated elsewhere, in the Middle East for example, before it was brought into Europe as a part of the shift from foraging for food production.

These examples show that since agriculture replace hunter-gatherer practice, people at that time were ready as a result of accumulated knowledge of wild plants and wild animals that they depended on. Agriculture may also be the result of the need to increase productivity as well as population.

In my opinion, the change to agriculture was a correct course of action. The “oasis hypothesis” states that aridity forced plants, people and animals to gather together near the permanent water source. This is how people develop to know their own needs to tame and mold different species. These skills give people the ability to control their resources, helping them not be collapsed.

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