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.
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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
1. Food collection: collecting vegetation, hunting animals, and fishing.
2. Horticulture: plant cultivation with simple tools and small plots of land, relying solely on human power.
3. Pastoralism: keeping domesticated animals and using their products as a major food source.
Five Major Food Gathering Strategies
4. Agriculture: horticulture using animal or mechanical power and some form of irrigation.
5. Industrialization: production of food through complex machinery.
Human Adaptation
Humans adapt to climates in two ways:
1. Culturally - dietary patterns, levels of activities
2. 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.
a) Pastoralism
b) Horticulture
c) Food collection
d) 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:
a) horticulture.
b) pastoralism.
c) agriculture.
d) 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.
a) the industrial revolutionb) the French revolutionc) the neolithic revolutiond) 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.
a) horticultureb) nomadismc) agricultured) 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
Features of Four Major Food Procurement Categories
Foragers Horticulturalist
Population Size Small Small/moderate
Permanency of settlement
Nomadic (or semi)Generally sedentary
Surpluses Minimal Minimal
Trade Minimal Minimal
Labor specialization
None Minimal
Class differences None Minimal
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