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Eviroment, Agriculture and Society - CPSC 113

1/16: Lecture 1 - A Brief Review on the Complexities of Environment, Agriculture and Society

  • Use natural resources not abuse them

  • Society

    • Health, wealth/poverty, behavior, communities

  • Nutrition, food security, food safety, climate change, and bioenergy

Coarse Goals

  • Provide an intro to agriculture

  • Focus on the development of critical thinking skills

  • Most farmworkers are immigrants: 73%

Food Safety

1/18: Lecture 2 -

  • The Scientific Method

  • The Value of Science

  • Critical Thinking

Scientist?

  • Stereotypically a white man in a lab coat

  • Female Scientist Noble Prize Winners

    • Elizabeth H. Blackburn, genetics

    • Barbara McClintock, genetics

    • May-Britt Moser, physiology

    • Dorothy Crowfoot, chemistry

    • Marie Curie, chemistry

Scientific Method

  • Science isn’t simple, there are small details

  • Benefits and outcomes are important in science

  • Community feedback

  • Science -> complex

Some Scientific Assumptions

  • The world (our environment) is knowable

  • Basis patterns that describe events in the mural world are uniform throughout time and space

  • Where 2 equally plausible explanations for a phenomenon are possible, we should choose the simpler one

    • KISS : Keep It Simple Stupid

  • Change in knowledge is inevitable because new evidence ,ay challenge prevailing theories.

  • New facts can disprove existing theories, science can never provide absolute proof that a theory is correct

  • Even if there is no way to secure complex and absolute truth

  • Science can determine mechanisms of processes and t can help find practical solutions

Hypothesis testing

  • In scientific research the hypothesis is always stayed in the null form

  • The null hypothesis is accepted or rejected

  • Formally H: mu - X = 0

  • The control value= the values for the treatments

Dr. Carl Sagan’s “Baloney Detection Kit”

  • How reliable are the sources of the claim?

  • Have the claims been verified by other sources?

  • What position does the majority of the scientific community hold in these issues?

  • How does this claim fit with what we know about how the world works?

  • Are the arguments balanced and logical?

  • What do you know about the sources of funding for a particular position?

  • Where was evidence for competing theories published?

Critical Thinking

  • An ability to evaluate information and opinions in a systematic, purposeful, efficient manner

  • Based on logic and reason, critical thinking brings context, empathy, history and values to bear in…

  • Ten steps to Critical Thinking

    • What is the purpose of my thinking

    • What precise questions am I trying to answer?

    • Within what point of view am I thinking?

    • ..

    • ..

    • ..

    • What concepts or ideas are central to my thinking?

    • What conclusions am I coming to?

    • What assumptions am I making?

    • If I accept the conclusions, what are the implications?

    • What would the consequences be….

  • Personal Attitudes to Think Critically

    • Skepticism and independence

    • Openmindedness and flexibility

    • Accuracy and orderliness

    • Persistence and relevance

    • Contextual sensitivity and empathy

    • Decisiveness and courage

    • Humility

  • Apply Critical thinking

    • Identify and evaluate premises and conclusions in an argument

    • Acknowledge and clarify uncertainties vagueness, equivocations and contradictions

    • Distinguish between facts and values

    • ….

1/23: Lecture 3 - Early Earth Environment

  • Early atmosphere was nitrogen, methane, and carbon dioxide

    • Early earth first warmed by high levels of CO2

    • The sun was weaker, but it was hotter

  • Perhaps life was on comets, europa, and enceladus

    • “Building Blocks of life Found on Samples Collected from Asteroids”

      • Life from space?

  • Nasa’s Kepler Project

  • Anthropomorphize - to give a nonhuman thing a human form or human characteristics

    • Anthropocentric

    • 1.) regarding humans as the universe’s most important entity

    • 2.) seeing things in human terms, especially judging things according to human perceptions, values, and experiences

  • The first life on earth lived of off sulfur

    • Sulphur reduction created energy consumption

  • CO2 levels were higher in the past than today

    • It's very little today

  • EVERYTHING IS LOOKED AT FROM A HUMAN PERSPECTIVE

  • Methanogens secrete mathate (CH4) as well as CO2

    • Methane + CO2 created a powerful greenhouse effect

    • To much methagones creates a snowball ear

    • Gets colder then the methagons go down

    • Temperatures keep decreasing

    • Biology affects the earth again

  • Many organisms live under antarctica

  • Coal

    • Fossilized plant material preserved by burial in sediments and compacted and condensed by geological forces into carbon-rich fuel

  • Life changs the earth - James Lovelock

  • Gaia Hypothesis - the theory that living organisms and their inorganic surrounding have evolved together as a single living system that greatly affects the chemistry and conditions of earth’s surface

    • Gaia - Goddess of the Earth

  • Dimethylsufide (DMS) may act as a governor for global climate

    • Natural source of sulphur

  • What is considered evolutionary success?

  • Anthropocene - declare dawn of human-influence age

    • Nuclear bombs?

    • Lunar Anthropocene

1/25: Lecture 4 - Animal Domestication

Fertile Crescent

  • Animals were domesticated in this area

    • Sheep, pigs, cattle, goats

Domestication

  • Adapting or taming of wild species of plants or animals to be used by humans

  • Agriculture as an approach to meeting food need was a gradual process likely lasting thousands of years

  • Domesticated animals are a great model for understanding genetics, adaptation to new environment etc

    • Are made to adapt for humans and cant survive in the wild

Study of Domesticated Organisms Crucial to Darwin’s Concept of Natural Resources

  • Gets theory by watching what humans did

Auroch - Wild Cattle

  • First appeared in europe around 25,000 years ago

  • Forest animals

  • Aurochs was one of Europe's most important mammal species

  • Large organisms

  • Magnalidians - they worshiped the aurochs

The Carta Marina

  • A map that showed everything that was and you can to in the swedish peninsula

  • Olaus writes about aurochs that were so strong and savage that with its horns it lifted a soldier from their horse and dash him to the ground

Cattle Domestications

  • Some say cattle were domesticated about 10,000 years ago followed by sheep, goat, pigs and dogs

  • There a theory that says they were domesticated for worship

  • Cattles were domesticated in the near east then migrated with humans to Europe

    • it was easier to domesticate near eastern cattle than europeans cattle

    • At least 2 distinct domestication ever for Bos primigenius

      • Taurin and Zebu

      • Bos primigenius taurus

        • Angus, charolais, fighting bull, texas longhorn

      • Bos primigenius indicus

        • Boran, indo-brazilian …

    • Cattle became completely depended on humans

    • The genetic diversity mirrored the activities of humans

Domestication of Pigs

  • Paintings and carvings of pigs have been found over 25,000 years ago

  • Have been one of agriculture best income source and a good source of protein

  • Relatives:

    • African Warthog

    • Barbarosa - SE Asia

    • Peccary

  • Pigs were made in to statuettes in ancient Persia

  • The pics spread across Asia, Europe and Africa

  • Pigs like eating about anything so you can stay longer in one place while sheep and cattle like micing to get the best grass

  • Dna data suggest

    • The time of divergence of the ancestors for the European and Chinese pigs is about 500,000 YBP

    • Pigs are domesticated more because its easier

    • European domestication was a direct consequence of the introduction of Near Eastern domestic pigs into Europe by early farmer

    • Domestication in middle east was different than in Europe

    • Once European wild boar were domesticated it worked better for European farmer

  • Wild Hogs live mostly in the south; they are very feral

Chicken Domestication

  • All come from Red Junglefowl - Gallus gallus murghi

  • Chickens are different because human made rice and chickens come to take it so humans domesticated them

  • Chickens were breed for eggs in milk until the 1900s

  • Chickens were grown to grow fast

1/20: Lecture 5 - Plant Domestication

  • More food = more people

    • larger population means larger intellectual population

    • Higher complex societies

  • Daniel Webster “When tillage begins,other arts follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of human civilization.”

  • All domestication happens at the same time

  • Genetic Variation: not all plants are identical some break easter than other

  • Domestication started out as an accident

    • Then they start selecting which ones they want to domesticate

  • Instead of natural selection humans our selecting it, we override what happens in natural selections but natural selection still happens 24/7

Wheat Domestication

  • 2 wild wheat collected to eat and in the process humans put them together so it creates another type

  • They cross together and then humans select and make it better

  • It happened until humans made bread wheat

  • Wild wheat species break easily and because it has a smooth end it drops into the soil and dispurses

  • The domesticated ones have a coarse end so it doesn't dig into the groups since humans want plants to stay in one place

  • Sorghum contains sugar, used for fuel (?)

  • Domestication in wheat led to changed in grain size, shape, and etc

Egyptian Tomb Paintings

  • Chopping trees, cultivation land, along the Nile Delta agriculture

  • Let the Nile flood and then put the plant seeds and let animals walk on it

Beer Archeology

  • Alcohol is easier to make than bread

  • Alcohol came from fruits rotting on the ground

    • Humans had it and it made them feel good so they started making it themselves

  • They drank alcohol for “hydration” since it was safer than drinking most waters (waters has bacteria and etc)

  • Some theories say that people were in an unaltered state of mind which is why they thought of cave drawing, art, medicine, and wtc.

  • Egyptians had medicinal wine 5,100 years ago, healed mind and body

Corn Domestications

  • Corn is man's earliest inventions

  • Aztects made human sacrifices to the corn god

  • Pellagra is a disease from a lack of nutrition when europeans used corn for everything it was created

  • Diversity is important since different kinds of corn are used for different usages

  • First Domestication - Popping

    • Pop-corn

    • Movie theaters didn't sell popcorn until the depression, they has popcorn venders in front

    • Caverns in Mexico were good place for corn

      • They used sand to pop the corn so that it wasn't hard

  • Bat cave, New Mexico

    • Found many variation in kernel size in the caves

  • Mexico is where the first Maize (CORN) was developed

Maya Civilization

  • About 250 - 900 AD

  • Forest Gardens are complex

    • The forest hardens were around their houses

      • Polyculture (restrictions cuz they cant make much)

        • Lets environment stay stable

  • Around 900 AD the population was 500 people per square mile and more than 2000 people per square mile in the cities

  • They start growing corn/maize since they needed a lot of food because of population increase

    • Had to burn down forests for the fields

  • Started having malnutrition that was show in the mayan bones

  • DON'T wanna burn down tropical rainforest the soil doesn't sustain it self

  • Water was very important to the Maaya because of the geology of the land, depended on rainfall for survival

  • Yocunte was the Mayans water supply

    • As population grew Yocunute weren't enough

    • SO the constructed Chultuns (cisterns)

  • Maya civilization suffered through 100 years of low rainfall

    • 3-9 years with little to no rainfall

  • Roman Waring/ Medieval Warming

    • Earth is wetter due to increase water in the atmosphere

  • Vandal Minimum/Little ice age

    • Droughts are worse and more frequent

  • Maya turned to religion as a defense against drought

    • Maya tradition, caves and cenotes are also home of chac, the maya god of rain, and the entrance to Xibalba, the Underworld

    • Sacrifice artifacts, animals, and humans

    • Back fires cuz their water gets polluted

      • Built water filters

  • Theories for the Collapse of Maya Civilization: (1) Peasant revolt (2)

There's a people that are collecting a lot of seeds of plants just in case some comes up they want to have a “seed bank”

2/1: Lecture 5 - Native American Agriculture

Native American Plan use Timelines

  • 10-8k years ago picking sunflower but not cultivating it

  • 8-5k years ago found squash

  • 5-3k years ago grew sumpweed

Plant Cultivated by Native Americans

  • Sumpweed Maeshelder

    • 32% protein and 45% oil

    • Strong odor and skin irritant

    • By the time Europeansa colonizing sumpweed disappeared

1,000 AD - COmplex Agricultural System Based on 3 Major Crops

  • First crop was Cucurbits - Squash and Pumpkins

  • Beans

    • Common Bean - Phaseolus 5000 BC

  • Maize (CORN)

  • Excellent Cultivating Combination

    • First grow corn

    • Then put beans on the hill

      • twined around the corn

    • Then put the squash on the floor

      • It keeps ground from being dry and keeps weeds from growing

Nitrogen

  • Organisms need it to make amino acids, proteins, nucleic acids and other essential organic compounds

    • Cannot be used by higher Organisms until it is changed

Nitrogen cycle

  • Nitrogen fixing bacteria fix N2 into ammonia

  • ….

Plants have Leghemoglobin

  • Sends oxygen around

  • How they make plant based meat taste like meat

Amino Acids

  • Used for Protein synthesis

  • Twenty Total

    • Human can synthesize 11 in their body

    • 9 amino acids must come from the diet and these are referred to as Essential Amino Acids

  • Believed land was a gift to each generation

  • Land tenure

    • Native americans believed land should be owned by the village not just one person

    • They migrated together as a community once they ran out of resources

    • All village member could use communal lands not under cultivation for hunting, fishing, berry picking, gathering wood etc

    • They used woodland to get protein from animals

      • Domesticated animals only replaced woodland animals starting the 19th century

    • The kand system was used to survive through many things

    • This system resulted in equal share of the land

      • Prevented land hoarding for wealth and status

2/6: Lecture 6 - Early American Agriculture

  • Europeans come over thinking wilderness = scary unknown

    • “Environment of evil” wilderness & the american mind

Colonial Philosophy

  • Farming is used to create a surplus to be sold at a profit

  • Land is owned by individuals

  • Land is a valued commodity that is bought ans sold to create profit

  • Land not being farmed is wasted land and therefore native americans do not have legitimate title

  • Civilized people are farmers

  • European-deprived agricultural methods, cropping and raising stock

    • Wilderness = waste of land

Economic Factor

  • The Europeans thought that native american farming resulted in inadequate and improper use of land, a waste of time

^^ These attitudes resulted in justification im the change in ownership from Native Americans to the colonist

Europeans Dealing with Native Americans

  • Native Americans no real centralized government – Europeans tended to refer to Native Americans sharing similar cultures as tribes

  • A few tribe representatives were easier to deal with than many representatives of small villages etc.

  • Spanish governments recognized Native Americans land rights and dealt with them accordingly

  • French never recognized the right of Native American titles. They claimed right if possession by force

  • Dutch recognized native american rights

  • British looked away as colonist took NA land

Agrarianism

  • The belief that farmers feed everyone; they're the backbone of our society

  • Thomas Jefferson Agrarianism

    • Country people are morally virtuous and superior to city dwellers

    • Ownership of land was a natural right and ade the small scale farmers the bastions of freedom and independence, the vanguard of American democracy

    • All Wealth and virtue derived from the land and family farmers

  • Thanksgiving

    • Sarah Josepha Hale describes thanksgiving in a novel

      • Novel published in Boston in 1827

      • Show how well you're doing

      • Show how a man is taking care of his family

      • Have a roasted turkey

      • Sarah gives credit for the “first American Thanksgiving” to the settlers of Massachusetts Bay and not the Pilgrims

  • American Agrarian Tradition = Myth

**American Farmers moved quickly from subsistence farming to commercial farming.

Philosophy of the 1800 election

  • The founding fathers didn't know what they wanted the government to be

  • “The future of the nation lay in its abundance of natural resources”

  • Because of all the natural resources if we keep it all together and distributing it to everyone we can live in harmony

Cotton production

  • Critical to the Developing United States

  • First cotton grown in the US -> Coastal COtton

    • Imported from the West indies and grown in the coastal areas

    • Produces long stone fiber that are easily separated from the seeds

    • Low yielding

    • Can only be grown along south carolina and Georgia (?)

  • Upland Cotton

    • Originated in Mexico

    • High Yielding

    • Adapted to wide range of environments can be grown throughout the US

    • Especially adapted to the rich solid of delta regions

  • Eli Whitney - Cotton Gin (1794)

    • Before a slave could clean 1 pound of cotton lint a day

    • After 1 slave could clean 50 pounds of lint a day. The economics were now very favorable for cotton production

    • Cotton production soon spreads across the South

    • Spread slavery after cotton gin

      • Before people don't believe slavery was useful

      • After slavery was seen as moral and useful

**As agriculture grows it gets more labor intensive

Evolution of American Agriculture

Rapid growth in technology

  • Midwest the plow made all the difference

  • The shiny, self-polishing steel shat did not adhere to the sticky, gumbo soil of the Midwest like the cast iron shares did! This new tool revolutionized farming

  • JOHN LANE invented the first steel breaking plow

  • JOHN DEERE perfected the steel plow

    • Up until deere people went to a black smith to get a plow

    • He started to produce it , i

    • Prairie lands that were difficult to clear could be quickly put into agricultural production

Agricultural Tools in Early America

  • Scythe

  • Sickle

  • cradle

Animal Power & Improved Technology

Mechanization

  • Number of horses go down and number of tractors go up

  • Because of mechanization wheat production didn't need as much labors; # of farms went down and # of workers went down

**Farm Production went up in the 1940

Why American Agriculture Changed

  • In 1970s Richard Nixon was facing re-election

  • He started corn fuels so that he gets more voters

  • He starts planning to make more corn

    • Everything from cereal, to biscuits and flour used corn

2/8: Lecture 6 -

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Eviroment, Agriculture and Society - CPSC 113

1/16: Lecture 1 - A Brief Review on the Complexities of Environment, Agriculture and Society

  • Use natural resources not abuse them
  • Society
    • Health, wealth/poverty, behavior, communities
  • Nutrition, food security, food safety, climate change, and bioenergy

Coarse Goals

  • Provide an intro to agriculture
  • Focus on the development of critical thinking skills
  • Most farmworkers are immigrants: 73%

Food Safety

1/18: Lecture 2 -

  • The Scientific Method
  • The Value of Science
  • Critical Thinking

Scientist?

  • Stereotypically a white man in a lab coat
  • Female Scientist Noble Prize Winners
    • Elizabeth H. Blackburn, genetics
    • Barbara McClintock, genetics
    • May-Britt Moser, physiology
    • Dorothy Crowfoot, chemistry
    • Marie Curie, chemistry

Scientific Method

  • Science isn’t simple, there are small details
  • Benefits and outcomes are important in science
  • Community feedback
  • Science -> complex

Some Scientific Assumptions

  • The world (our environment) is knowable
  • Basis patterns that describe events in the mural world are uniform throughout time and space
  • Where 2 equally plausible explanations for a phenomenon are possible, we should choose the simpler one
    • KISS : Keep It Simple Stupid
  • Change in knowledge is inevitable because new evidence ,ay challenge prevailing theories.
  • New facts can disprove existing theories, science can never provide absolute proof that a theory is correct
  • Even if there is no way to secure complex and absolute truth
  • Science can determine mechanisms of processes and t can help find practical solutions

Hypothesis testing

  • In scientific research the hypothesis is always stayed in the null form
  • The null hypothesis is accepted or rejected
  • Formally H: mu - X = 0
  • The control value= the values for the treatments

Dr. Carl Sagan’s “Baloney Detection Kit”

  • How reliable are the sources of the claim?
  • Have the claims been verified by other sources?
  • What position does the majority of the scientific community hold in these issues?
  • How does this claim fit with what we know about how the world works?
  • Are the arguments balanced and logical?
  • What do you know about the sources of funding for a particular position?
  • Where was evidence for competing theories published?

Critical Thinking

  • An ability to evaluate information and opinions in a systematic, purposeful, efficient manner
  • Based on logic and reason, critical thinking brings context, empathy, history and values to bear in…
  • Ten steps to Critical Thinking
    • What is the purpose of my thinking
    • What precise questions am I trying to answer?
    • Within what point of view am I thinking?
    • ..
    • ..
    • ..
    • What concepts or ideas are central to my thinking?
    • What conclusions am I coming to?
    • What assumptions am I making?
    • If I accept the conclusions, what are the implications?
    • What would the consequences be….
  • Personal Attitudes to Think Critically
    • Skepticism and independence
    • Openmindedness and flexibility
    • Accuracy and orderliness
    • Persistence and relevance
    • Contextual sensitivity and empathy
    • Decisiveness and courage
    • Humility
  • Apply Critical thinking
    • Identify and evaluate premises and conclusions in an argument
    • Acknowledge and clarify uncertainties vagueness, equivocations and contradictions
    • Distinguish between facts and values
    • ….

1/23: Lecture 3 - Early Earth Environment

  • Early atmosphere was nitrogen, methane, and carbon dioxide
    • Early earth first warmed by high levels of CO2
    • The sun was weaker, but it was hotter
  • Perhaps life was on comets, europa, and enceladus
    • “Building Blocks of life Found on Samples Collected from Asteroids”
      • Life from space?
  • Nasa’s Kepler Project
  • Anthropomorphize - to give a nonhuman thing a human form or human characteristics
    • Anthropocentric
    • 1.) regarding humans as the universe’s most important entity
    • 2.) seeing things in human terms, especially judging things according to human perceptions, values, and experiences
  • The first life on earth lived of off sulfur
    • Sulphur reduction created energy consumption
  • CO2 levels were higher in the past than today
    • It's very little today
  • EVERYTHING IS LOOKED AT FROM A HUMAN PERSPECTIVE
  • Methanogens secrete mathate (CH4) as well as CO2
    • Methane + CO2 created a powerful greenhouse effect
    • To much methagones creates a snowball ear
    • Gets colder then the methagons go down
    • Temperatures keep decreasing
    • Biology affects the earth again
  • Many organisms live under antarctica
  • Coal
    • Fossilized plant material preserved by burial in sediments and compacted and condensed by geological forces into carbon-rich fuel
  • Life changs the earth - James Lovelock
  • Gaia Hypothesis - the theory that living organisms and their inorganic surrounding have evolved together as a single living system that greatly affects the chemistry and conditions of earth’s surface
    • Gaia - Goddess of the Earth
  • Dimethylsufide (DMS) may act as a governor for global climate
    • Natural source of sulphur
  • What is considered evolutionary success?
  • Anthropocene - declare dawn of human-influence age
    • Nuclear bombs?
    • Lunar Anthropocene

1/25: Lecture 4 - Animal Domestication

Fertile Crescent

  • Animals were domesticated in this area
    • Sheep, pigs, cattle, goats

Domestication

  • Adapting or taming of wild species of plants or animals to be used by humans
  • Agriculture as an approach to meeting food need was a gradual process likely lasting thousands of years
  • Domesticated animals are a great model for understanding genetics, adaptation to new environment etc
    • Are made to adapt for humans and cant survive in the wild

Study of Domesticated Organisms Crucial to Darwin’s Concept of Natural Resources

  • Gets theory by watching what humans did

Auroch - Wild Cattle

  • First appeared in europe around 25,000 years ago
  • Forest animals
  • Aurochs was one of Europe's most important mammal species
  • Large organisms
  • Magnalidians - they worshiped the aurochs

The Carta Marina

  • A map that showed everything that was and you can to in the swedish peninsula
  • Olaus writes about aurochs that were so strong and savage that with its horns it lifted a soldier from their horse and dash him to the ground

Cattle Domestications

  • Some say cattle were domesticated about 10,000 years ago followed by sheep, goat, pigs and dogs
  • There a theory that says they were domesticated for worship
  • Cattles were domesticated in the near east then migrated with humans to Europe
    • it was easier to domesticate near eastern cattle than europeans cattle
    • At least 2 distinct domestication ever for Bos primigenius
      • Taurin and Zebu
      • Bos primigenius taurus
        • Angus, charolais, fighting bull, texas longhorn
      • Bos primigenius indicus
        • Boran, indo-brazilian …
    • Cattle became completely depended on humans
    • The genetic diversity mirrored the activities of humans

Domestication of Pigs

  • Paintings and carvings of pigs have been found over 25,000 years ago
  • Have been one of agriculture best income source and a good source of protein
  • Relatives:
    • African Warthog
    • Barbarosa - SE Asia
    • Peccary
  • Pigs were made in to statuettes in ancient Persia
  • The pics spread across Asia, Europe and Africa
  • Pigs like eating about anything so you can stay longer in one place while sheep and cattle like micing to get the best grass
  • Dna data suggest
    • The time of divergence of the ancestors for the European and Chinese pigs is about 500,000 YBP
    • Pigs are domesticated more because its easier
    • European domestication was a direct consequence of the introduction of Near Eastern domestic pigs into Europe by early farmer
    • Domestication in middle east was different than in Europe
    • Once European wild boar were domesticated it worked better for European farmer
  • Wild Hogs live mostly in the south; they are very feral

Chicken Domestication

  • All come from Red Junglefowl - Gallus gallus murghi
  • Chickens are different because human made rice and chickens come to take it so humans domesticated them
  • Chickens were breed for eggs in milk until the 1900s
  • Chickens were grown to grow fast

1/20: Lecture 5 - Plant Domestication

  • More food = more people
    • larger population means larger intellectual population
    • Higher complex societies
  • Daniel Webster “When tillage begins,other arts follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of human civilization.”
  • All domestication happens at the same time
  • Genetic Variation: not all plants are identical some break easter than other
  • Domestication started out as an accident
    • Then they start selecting which ones they want to domesticate
  • Instead of natural selection humans our selecting it, we override what happens in natural selections but natural selection still happens 24/7

Wheat Domestication

  • 2 wild wheat collected to eat and in the process humans put them together so it creates another type
  • They cross together and then humans select and make it better
  • It happened until humans made bread wheat
  • Wild wheat species break easily and because it has a smooth end it drops into the soil and dispurses
  • The domesticated ones have a coarse end so it doesn't dig into the groups since humans want plants to stay in one place
  • Sorghum contains sugar, used for fuel (?)
  • Domestication in wheat led to changed in grain size, shape, and etc

Egyptian Tomb Paintings

  • Chopping trees, cultivation land, along the Nile Delta agriculture
  • Let the Nile flood and then put the plant seeds and let animals walk on it

Beer Archeology

  • Alcohol is easier to make than bread
  • Alcohol came from fruits rotting on the ground
    • Humans had it and it made them feel good so they started making it themselves
  • They drank alcohol for “hydration” since it was safer than drinking most waters (waters has bacteria and etc)
  • Some theories say that people were in an unaltered state of mind which is why they thought of cave drawing, art, medicine, and wtc.
  • Egyptians had medicinal wine 5,100 years ago, healed mind and body

Corn Domestications

  • Corn is man's earliest inventions
  • Aztects made human sacrifices to the corn god
  • Pellagra is a disease from a lack of nutrition when europeans used corn for everything it was created
  • Diversity is important since different kinds of corn are used for different usages
  • First Domestication - Popping
    • Pop-corn
    • Movie theaters didn't sell popcorn until the depression, they has popcorn venders in front
    • Caverns in Mexico were good place for corn
      • They used sand to pop the corn so that it wasn't hard
  • Bat cave, New Mexico
    • Found many variation in kernel size in the caves
  • Mexico is where the first Maize (CORN) was developed

Maya Civilization

  • About 250 - 900 AD
  • Forest Gardens are complex
    • The forest hardens were around their houses
      • Polyculture (restrictions cuz they cant make much)
        • Lets environment stay stable
  • Around 900 AD the population was 500 people per square mile and more than 2000 people per square mile in the cities
  • They start growing corn/maize since they needed a lot of food because of population increase
    • Had to burn down forests for the fields
  • Started having malnutrition that was show in the mayan bones
  • DON'T wanna burn down tropical rainforest the soil doesn't sustain it self
  • Water was very important to the Maaya because of the geology of the land, depended on rainfall for survival
  • Yocunte was the Mayans water supply
    • As population grew Yocunute weren't enough
    • SO the constructed Chultuns (cisterns)
  • Maya civilization suffered through 100 years of low rainfall
    • 3-9 years with little to no rainfall
  • Roman Waring/ Medieval Warming
    • Earth is wetter due to increase water in the atmosphere
  • Vandal Minimum/Little ice age
    • Droughts are worse and more frequent
  • Maya turned to religion as a defense against drought
    • Maya tradition, caves and cenotes are also home of chac, the maya god of rain, and the entrance to Xibalba, the Underworld
    • Sacrifice artifacts, animals, and humans
    • Back fires cuz their water gets polluted
      • Built water filters
  • Theories for the Collapse of Maya Civilization: (1) Peasant revolt (2)

There's a people that are collecting a lot of seeds of plants just in case some comes up they want to have a “seed bank”

2/1: Lecture 5 - Native American Agriculture

Native American Plan use Timelines

  • 10-8k years ago picking sunflower but not cultivating it
  • 8-5k years ago found squash
  • 5-3k years ago grew sumpweed

Plant Cultivated by Native Americans

  • Sumpweed Maeshelder
    • 32% protein and 45% oil
    • Strong odor and skin irritant
    • By the time Europeansa colonizing sumpweed disappeared

1,000 AD - COmplex Agricultural System Based on 3 Major Crops

  • First crop was Cucurbits - Squash and Pumpkins
  • Beans
    • Common Bean - Phaseolus 5000 BC
  • Maize (CORN)
  • Excellent Cultivating Combination
    • First grow corn
    • Then put beans on the hill
      • twined around the corn
    • Then put the squash on the floor
      • It keeps ground from being dry and keeps weeds from growing

Nitrogen

  • Organisms need it to make amino acids, proteins, nucleic acids and other essential organic compounds
    • Cannot be used by higher Organisms until it is changed

Nitrogen cycle

  • Nitrogen fixing bacteria fix N2 into ammonia
  • ….

Plants have Leghemoglobin

  • Sends oxygen around
  • How they make plant based meat taste like meat

Amino Acids

  • Used for Protein synthesis
  • Twenty Total
    • Human can synthesize 11 in their body
    • 9 amino acids must come from the diet and these are referred to as Essential Amino Acids
  • Believed land was a gift to each generation
  • Land tenure
    • Native americans believed land should be owned by the village not just one person
    • They migrated together as a community once they ran out of resources
    • All village member could use communal lands not under cultivation for hunting, fishing, berry picking, gathering wood etc
    • They used woodland to get protein from animals
      • Domesticated animals only replaced woodland animals starting the 19th century
    • The kand system was used to survive through many things
    • This system resulted in equal share of the land
      • Prevented land hoarding for wealth and status

2/6: Lecture 6 - Early American Agriculture

  • Europeans come over thinking wilderness = scary unknown
    • “Environment of evil” wilderness & the american mind

Colonial Philosophy

  • Farming is used to create a surplus to be sold at a profit
  • Land is owned by individuals
  • Land is a valued commodity that is bought ans sold to create profit
  • Land not being farmed is wasted land and therefore native americans do not have legitimate title
  • Civilized people are farmers
  • European-deprived agricultural methods, cropping and raising stock
    • Wilderness = waste of land

Economic Factor

  • The Europeans thought that native american farming resulted in inadequate and improper use of land, a waste of time

^^ These attitudes resulted in justification im the change in ownership from Native Americans to the colonist

Europeans Dealing with Native Americans

  • Native Americans no real centralized government – Europeans tended to refer to Native Americans sharing similar cultures as tribes
  • A few tribe representatives were easier to deal with than many representatives of small villages etc.
  • Spanish governments recognized Native Americans land rights and dealt with them accordingly
  • French never recognized the right of Native American titles. They claimed right if possession by force
  • Dutch recognized native american rights
  • British looked away as colonist took NA land

Agrarianism

  • The belief that farmers feed everyone; they're the backbone of our society
  • Thomas Jefferson Agrarianism
    • Country people are morally virtuous and superior to city dwellers
    • Ownership of land was a natural right and ade the small scale farmers the bastions of freedom and independence, the vanguard of American democracy
    • All Wealth and virtue derived from the land and family farmers
  • Thanksgiving
    • Sarah Josepha Hale describes thanksgiving in a novel
      • Novel published in Boston in 1827
      • Show how well you're doing
      • Show how a man is taking care of his family
      • Have a roasted turkey
      • Sarah gives credit for the “first American Thanksgiving” to the settlers of Massachusetts Bay and not the Pilgrims
  • American Agrarian Tradition = Myth

**American Farmers moved quickly from subsistence farming to commercial farming.

Philosophy of the 1800 election

  • The founding fathers didn't know what they wanted the government to be
  • “The future of the nation lay in its abundance of natural resources”
  • Because of all the natural resources if we keep it all together and distributing it to everyone we can live in harmony

Cotton production

  • Critical to the Developing United States
  • First cotton grown in the US -> Coastal COtton
    • Imported from the West indies and grown in the coastal areas
    • Produces long stone fiber that are easily separated from the seeds
    • Low yielding
    • Can only be grown along south carolina and Georgia (?)
  • Upland Cotton
    • Originated in Mexico
    • High Yielding
    • Adapted to wide range of environments can be grown throughout the US
    • Especially adapted to the rich solid of delta regions
  • Eli Whitney - Cotton Gin (1794)
    • Before a slave could clean 1 pound of cotton lint a day
    • After 1 slave could clean 50 pounds of lint a day. The economics were now very favorable for cotton production
    • Cotton production soon spreads across the South
    • Spread slavery after cotton gin
      • Before people don't believe slavery was useful
      • After slavery was seen as moral and useful

**As agriculture grows it gets more labor intensive

Evolution of American Agriculture

Rapid growth in technology

  • Midwest the plow made all the difference
  • The shiny, self-polishing steel shat did not adhere to the sticky, gumbo soil of the Midwest like the cast iron shares did! This new tool revolutionized farming
  • JOHN LANE invented the first steel breaking plow
  • JOHN DEERE perfected the steel plow
    • Up until deere people went to a black smith to get a plow
    • He started to produce it , i
    • Prairie lands that were difficult to clear could be quickly put into agricultural production

Agricultural Tools in Early America

  • Scythe
  • Sickle
  • cradle

Animal Power & Improved Technology

Mechanization

  • Number of horses go down and number of tractors go up
  • Because of mechanization wheat production didn't need as much labors; # of farms went down and # of workers went down

**Farm Production went up in the 1940

Why American Agriculture Changed

  • In 1970s Richard Nixon was facing re-election
  • He started corn fuels so that he gets more voters
  • He starts planning to make more corn
    • Everything from cereal, to biscuits and flour used corn

2/8: Lecture 6 -