(Module 35) Agriculture Origins and Diffusions

What is domestication?

The long-term process through which humans selectively breed, protect, and care for individuals taken from populations of wild plant and animal species to create genetically distinct species, known as domesticates.

What are the First Agriculture Revolutions?

The period during which the early domestication and diffusion of plants and animals and the cultivation of seed crops led to the development of agriculture.

What is teosinte?

A large wild grass native to Mexico that produced the small ears of maize (corn) that were a favored food among early groups in Mesoamerica.

What is Mesoamerica?

The cultural region in the Americas that includes the diverse civilizations in the modern-day countries of Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Belize, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica.

What is biodiversity?

The variety and variability among species and ecosystems.

What did Carl Sauer propose about domestication?

He proposed that the process of domestication was independently developed by people who had enough food to remain settled in one place and devote considerable time to plant care.

What is a hearth in the context of domestication?

A center where innovations or new practices develop and from which the innovations or new practices spread or diffuse.

What is the Fertile Crescent?

An area in Southwest Asia that includes the river valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates; the earliest center for domestication of seed plants.

What is the Indus River Valley?

An area along the Indus River that flows from the highlands of Tibet and continues down along the border between present-day Pakistan and India; a site of the earliest domestication of plants and herd animals.

What is the Columbian Exchange?

The interaction and widespread transfer of plants, culture, human populations, technology, disease, and ideas between the Americas, West Africa, and the Old World in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.