2B Foraging and Farming

What behaviors link foraging and farming

• benign or mutually beneficial exploitation

  • e.g. foraging and dispersing seeds, tolerating wild dogs that eat our scraps while guarding our homes

• active management

  • e.g. burning land, channeling watermelon selectively harvesting

• cultivation

  • e.g. often considered a type of agriculture

  • e.g. planting in prepared areas, controlling animals’ movements, stocking ponds

• domestication → central to “full blown agriculture”

  • e.g. changing species deliberately or not such that they are less able to live in the wild and are more dependent on humans

what are the implications of domestication?

• traits of domesticated species are usually less adaptive or even maladaptive under natural (wild) conditions

• traits may change through natural selection

what interacting factors influence our ability to get food?

• plant suitability

  • e.g. not toxic, an be digested, has nutrients, can be harvested, regularly available

• human ingenuity

  • tools and practices for harvesting and processing, management, cultivation, artificial section

• time and effort required vs other options

Path to domestication

• some plants we’ve been able to continuous exploit bc they’re easy to harvest, very suitable

• other plants we’ve had to manage and cultivate -→ domesticate

Explain the relevance of the maize ancestor teosinte

• is this plant suitable? is it worthwhile to forage, manage, cultivate compared to other options? can we make it edible and worth our time?

• big seeds made it difficult