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Author: Shahal Abbo
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2022-03-24
Total Pages: 289
ISBN-13: 1108493645
DOWNLOAD EBOOKRapid and knowledge-based agricultural origins and plant domestication in the Neolithic Near East gave rise to Western civilizations.
Author: Marcel Mazoyer
Publisher: NYU Press
Published: 2006-06-01
Total Pages: 529
ISBN-13: 1583674918
DOWNLOAD EBOOKOnly once we understand the long history of human efforts to draw sustenance from the land can we grasp the nature of the crisis that faces humankind today, as hundreds of millions of people are faced with famine or flight from the land. From Neolithic times through the earliest civilizations of the ancient Near East, in savannahs, river valleys and the terraces created by the Incas in the Andean mountains, an increasing range of agricultural techniques have developed in response to very different conditions. These developments are recounted in this book, with detailed attention to the ways in which plants, animals, soil, climate, and society have interacted. Mazoyer and Roudart’s A History of World Agriculture is a path-breaking and panoramic work, beginning with the emergence of agriculture after thousands of years in which human societies had depended on hunting and gathering, showing how agricultural techniques developed in the different regions of the world, and how this extraordinary wealth of knowledge, tradition and natural variety is endangered today by global capitialism, as it forces the unequal agrarian heritages of the world to conform to the norms of profit. During the twentieth century, mechanization, motorization and specialization have brought to a halt the pattern of cultural and environmental responses that characterized the global history of agriculture until then. Today a small number of corporations have the capacity to impose the farming methods on the planet that they find most profitable. Mazoyer and Roudart propose an alternative global strategy that can safegaurd the economies of the poor countries, reinvigorate the global economy, and create a livable future for mankind.
Author: David Rindos
Publisher: Academic Press
Published: 2013-10-22
Total Pages: 344
ISBN-13: 148326954X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe Origins of Agriculture: An Evolutionary Perspective presents an alternative approach to understanding cultural variation and change. It aims to demonstrate that domestication and the origin of agricultural systems are best understood by attempting to explicate the evolutionary forces that affected that development of domesticates and agricultural systems. The book begins by discussing cultural change, the domestication of plants, and the origin of agricultural systems in the most general of terms. It considers Darwinism in some depth, concentrating on the relationship between natural selection and cultural change. Subsequent chapters examine the world of domestication and agriculture and present a series of concepts that may permit a more natural explanation for these processes. These include concepts such as incidental domestication, specialized domestication, and agricultural domestication. The final two chapters present models for the origin and spread of agricultural systems based upon Darwinian evolutionary theory.
Author: Nancy L. Benco
Publisher: Smithsonian Books (DC)
Published: 1992-09-17
Total Pages: 248
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe eight case studies in this book -- each a synthesis of available knowledge about the origins of agriculture in a specific region of the globe -- enable scholars in diverse disciplines to examine humanity's transition to agricultural societies.
Author: David R. Harris
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Published: 2011-09-01
Total Pages: 321
ISBN-13: 1934536512
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn Origins of Agriculture in Western Central Asia, archaeologist David R. Harris addresses questions of when, how, and why agriculture and settled village life began east of the Caspian Sea. The book describes and assesses evidence from archaeological investigations in Turkmenistan and adjacent parts of Iran, Uzbekistan, and Afghanistan in relation to present and past environmental conditions and genetic and archaeological data on the ancestry of the crops and domestic animals of the Neolithic period. It includes accounts of previous research on the prehistoric archaeology of the region and reports the results of a recent environmental-archaeological project undertaken by British, Russian, and Turkmen archaeologists in Turkmenistan, principally at the early Neolithic site of Jeitun (Djeitun) on the southern edge of the Karakum desert. This project has demonstrated unequivocally that agropastoralists who cultivated barley and wheat, raised goats and sheep, hunted wild animals, made stone tools and pottery, and lived in small mudbrick settlements were present in southern Turkmenistan by 7,000 years ago (c. 6,000 BCE calibrated), where they came into contact with hunter-gatherers of the "Keltiminar Culture." It is possible that barley and goats were domesticated locally, but the available archaeological and genetic evidence leads to the conclusion that all or most of the elements of the Neolithic "Jeitun Culture" spread to the region from farther west by a process of demic or cultural diffusion that broadly parallels the spread of Neolithic agropastoralism from southwest Asia into Europe. By synthesizing for the first time what is currently known about the origins of agriculture in a large part of Central Asia, between the more fully investigated regions of southwest Asia and China, this book makes a unique contribution to the worldwide literature on transitions from hunting and gathering to agriculture.
Author: Mark Nathan Cohen
Publisher:
Published: 2013
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13: 9780813044897
DOWNLOAD EBOOKPresents data from nineteen different regions before, during, and after agricultural transitions, analyzing populations in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and South America while primarily focusing on North America. A wide range of health indicators are discussed, including mortality, episodic stress, physical trauma, degenerative bone conditions, isotopes, and dental pathology.
Author: C. Wesley Cowan
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
Published: 2006-05-18
Total Pages: 244
ISBN-13: 0817353496
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe eight case studies in this book -- each a synthesis of available knowledge about the origins of agriculture in a specific region of the globe -- enable scholars in diverse disciplines to examine humanity's transition to agricultural societies. Contributors include: Gary W. Crawford, Robin W. Dennell, and Jack R. Harlan.
Author: David R. Harris
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2024-11-01
Total Pages: 617
ISBN-13: 1040283462
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAs the first book to examine the origins and spread of agriculture and pastoralism in Europe and Asia as a whole, this major contribution should be essential reading for archaeologists, anthropologists, biologists and geographers. Adopting a novel approach to the subject, the authors examine it first in terms of seven different disciplinary perspectives: social, ecological, genetic, linguistic, biomolecular, epidemiological and geogrpahical. Then, 20 case studies are presented, which are based primarily on archaeological and biological evidence and which relate to three major regions: Southwest Asia, Europe and Central Asia to the Pacific. The book concludes with an overview of Eurasia as a whole.; The transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture had revolutionary consequences for human society. It led to the emergence of urban civilizations and ultimately to humanity's almost complete dependence on relatively few domesticated animals and plants. The subject has been much studied, but the results have tended to be interpreted largely in terms of local cultural sequences, with insufficient comparison made with evidence from other areas. In contrast, this book provides a continental- scale framework, with its scope extended to pastoralism because in Eurasia both the raising of livestock and the cultivation of crops were integral components of the agricultural "revolution" from its inception some 10,000 years ago.; Comprehensive and authoritative, "The Origins and Spread of Agriculture and Pastoralism in Eurasia" should appeal strongly to the wide readership of students and specialists concerned with the prehistoric antecedents of modern civilization.
Author: Christopher Isett
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Published: 2016-11-09
Total Pages: 423
ISBN-13: 1442209682
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis innovative text provides a compelling narrative world history through the lens of food and farmers. Tracing the history of agriculture from earliest times to the present, Christopher Isett and Stephen Millerargue that people, rather than markets, have been the primary agents of agricultural change. Exploring the actions taken by individuals and groups over time and analyzing their activities in the wider contexts of markets, states, wars, the environment, population increase, and similar factors, the authors emphasize how larger social and political forces inform decisions and lead to different technological outcomes. Both farmers and elites responded in ways that impeded economic development. Farmers, when able to trade with towns, used the revenue to gain more land and security. Elites used commercial opportunities to accumulate military power and slaves. The book explores these tendencies through rich case studies of ancient China; precolonial South America; early-modern France, England, and Japan; New World slavery; colonial Taiwan; socialist Cuba; and many other periods and places. Readers will understand how the promises and problems of contemporary agriculture are not simply technologically derived but are the outcomes of decisions and choices people have made and continue to make.
Author: Jacques Cauvin
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2000-07-27
Total Pages: 290
ISBN-13: 9780521651356
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA study of social and economic transformations in the Near East during Palaeolithic-Neolithic transition, first published in 2000.
