ANTH1220 Week 5

Subsistence system

The set of practices used by members of a society to acquire food

Carrying capacity

The number of calories that can be extracted from a unit of land to support a human population

Thomas Malthus

Wrote against the enlightenment belief of limitless progress. He believed population growth would always stand in the way. Population grows geometrically, whereas resources grow arithmetically. Which leads to poverty and misery in the lowest classes in the population. Agricultural methods determined population.

Ester Boserup

Wrote up against Malthusian pessimism, said that necessity is the mother of invention. In times of pressure, people step up their game, to support a bigger population

Who was right between Malthus and Boserup?

So far Boserup is right, human systems evolve and adapt

What % of human history relied on hunting/gathering?

99%

Foragers

The first affluent society as said by Marshall Sahlins. They usually live in small, flexible bands. Small groups allow it to be more cooperative and adaptive. Men typically do more hunting and women typically do more gathering. Hoarding gets you nowhere in this social organization. They are egalitarian and nomadic. Some foragers have seasonal base camps. They have a diet of gathered plants and hunted foods that are highly varied. What they hunt/gather depends on where they live. Gathered foods usually provide most of the calories (80% Richard Lee) People only work 2.5 hours a day. Examples include the Hadza, Inuit, etc.

What drove the domestication of plants and animals?

Population pressure, climate change, broad spectrum foraging, possibly even more things.

Broad spectrum foraging/revolution

The shift when humans expanded their diet past big game to include fish, wild grains, plants, small game, etc. People became sedentary, causing population growth.

What happened/are the consequences of domestication?

The idea of property begins, the landscape changes, population grows, height of men and women decrease 5 inches due to diet, plants and people depend on each other, the environment changes, disease comes into fruition, and labour

Horticulturalists

They’re sedentary, they live in small villages and often continue to engage in foraging. They plant small scale farms using hand tools. They usually have a gendered division of labour, but it varies. There is often a leveling mechanism to prevent accumulation, demand sharing for example. Examples include the Kaluli of Papua New Guinea

Extensive agriculture

Slash and burn farming, it can devastate the environment, the soil gets fertilized by ash, land is left fallow, mimics controlled forest fire, leads to erosion without fallowing

Pastoralism

A way of life that revolves around herding. It’s more common in areas/environments that do not support agriculture/ferning. Such as mountainous terrain, desert, dry environments. Animals provide milk, yogurt, cheese, blood, sometimes meat. Animals aren’t killed often for meat, usually for events, etc. They typically don’t farm often trade with neighbouring groups. They are nomadic. herding is done by men and boys, while women and girls do most other tasks. They practice transhumance. Examples include Basseri of Southern Iran.

Transhumance

Type of nomadism where they move seasonally back and forth. Pastoralists and their grazing can help the biodiversity of native plants when done responsibly, they try not to overgraze. Pastoralists try to use every part of the animal.

Intensive agriculture

Has a shorter fallow period. It requires more preparation and maintenance, but had greater yields. It was independently invented 6 times. However the crops had lower nutritional quality. You need large populations which result in more complex, social, economic, and political systems. Land owners can be wealthy, a hierarchical occupational specialization. Creating nobility and peasantry. It’s more about maximizing product than conserving resources. Examples include Peru, Mexico, Mesopotamia, Aztecs, etc.

Industrial agriculture

When food is produced by mechanized industry. The Industrial Revolution changed the way people worked. Agriculture is dependent on technology and chemical inputs. Monoculture is vulnerable to pests and depletes the soil. Confined animal feeding operations are used to maximize profit. It relies on poorly paid labour of undocumented immigrants with few rights and we almost never see where we get our food from. This can cause damage to the environment or yourself

Green Revolution

When farmers in India adopted North American technologies, seeds, to increase yields of crop. It was not sustainable, the soil was stripped of nutrients, global temperatures rose and crops failed. It led to a lot of long-term environment issues. Lots of farmers protested, committed suicide. Farming protests became more common