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Food Production: Domestication & Agriculture. Domestication. Domestication = production of new species of plant and animals by human intervention and co-evolution
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Domestication • Domestication = production of new species of plant and animals by human intervention and co-evolution • Interference in the life cycles of plants and animals so subsequent generations are of greater utility for and in more intimate contact with humans • Domestication demands increased dependence on humans, and vice versa • Domesticate defined as new species, having undergone some morphological change from wild species, but domestication as process more complicated than this (co-evolution in coupled natural-human systems)
Domestication as Process - Casual management , manipulation, and tending • Domestication: biological process that involves changes in the genotypes and phenotypes of plants and animals as they become dependent on humans for reproductive success (intentionality and co-evolution?) • Cultivation: intentional preparation and management of planting areas • Herding: intentional changes in relations between humans and gregarious animals • Agriculture: production of food and goods through farming and forestry. Agriculture was the key development that led to the rise of civilization, with the husbandry of domesticated animals and plants (i.e. crops) creating food surpluses that enabled the development of more densely populated and stratified societies. • Population and Landscape domestication
The first domesticated species: the dog? Canis lupus 12/05 Canis lupus familiaris
Was domestication actually “self-domestication,” the colonization of new ecological niches by animals such as wolves? Or did it result from intentional decisions by human beings? Probably a little of both: co-evolution • Goyet Dog (Belgium, 32-31k); (b) captive wolf; and (c) wolf Natufian human and dog burial (14-12k); Dogs came to Americas, Australia, and Africa with humans
Geographic range of Canis lupus (red) Paleolithic Dog DNA, 15-100k Although considerable variation occurs in the fossil canid isotope signatures between sites, the Belgian fossil large canids preyed in general on horse and large bovids. J. Archaeological Science (2/09)
Social Factors in Captive Wolf Aggression (Smith 2001) • Due to an ever-increasing demand for wolves (Canis lupus) as pets, the captive wolf and wolf-dog hybrid population is exploding. While less than 4,000 wild wolves remained in the lower 48 states, there were an estimated 500,000 wolves and hybrids living as pets in private homes in the US (Hope 1994). With the popularity of the wolf at an all time high, there is an ever-increasing demand for wolves as pets; every year, over 250,000 new pups are sold to Americans (Gibson 1996). • As a consequence of their wolf-like characteristics, for which they were originally purchased, pet wolves and hybrids are very often left without a suitable home. As pups, nearly all wolves and hybrids behave much like docile dogs, readily playful and relatively submissive. However, as they grow and approach sexual maturity, most become more predatory, wide-ranging, highly territorial and pack-oriented animals (Hope 1994; Klinghammer 1987; Rabb 1967). Seventy five percent of these pups do not survive their first year owing to human abuse, neglect and misunderstanding. It is common for a wolf or hybrid to accidentally injure their owner during play or when food is involved. The unpredictable nature of wolves and hybrids leads to nearly all of the surviving pets ending up homeless within three years (Gibson 1996).
Camp followers, new niche African Basenji Dingos in Australia with humans
9-7,000 BP 3-2,000 BP 2,100 BP
Dimitry Belyaev (late 1950s) behavioral experiment: From a farm breed population of Silver Foxes (Vulpes vulpes) 20-30 generations to domesticate; 10 to usable levels “To evaluate the foxes for tameness, we give them a series of tests. When a pup is one month old, an experimenter offers it food from his hand while trying to stroke and handle the pup..The pups are tested twice, once in a cage and once while moving freely with other pups in an enclosure, where they can choose to make contact either with the human experimenter or with another pup. The test is repeated monthly until the pups are six or seven months old. At seven or eight months, when the foxes reach sexual maturity, they are scored for tameness and assigned to one of three classes. The least domesticated foxes, those that fleefrom experimenters or bite when stroked or handled, are assigned to Class III. (Even Class III foxes are tamer than the calmest farm-bred foxes. Among other things, they allow themselves to be hand fed.) Foxes in Class II let themselves be petted and handled but show no emotionally friendly response to experimenters. Foxes in Class I are friendly toward experimenters, wagging their tails and whining. In the sixth generation bred for tameness we had to add an even higher-scoring category. Members of Class IE, the “domesticated elite,” are eager to establish human contact, whimpering to attract attention and sniffing and licking experimenters like dogs. They start displaying this kind of behavior before they are one month old. By the tenth generation, 18 percent of fox pups were elite; by the 20th, the figure had reached 35 percent. Today elite foxes make up 70 to 80 percent of our experimentally selected population. Now, 40 years and 45,000 foxes after Belyaev began, our experiment has achieved an array of concrete results. The most obvious of them is a unique population of 100 foxes (at latest count), each of them the product of between 30 and 35 generations of selection. They are unusual animals, docile, eager to please and unmistakably domesticated.” from L. Trut, American Scientist (1999)
Darwin noted in chapter 1 of On the Origin of Species, “not a single domestic animal can be named which has not in some country drooping ears”—a feature not found in any wild animal except the elephant. • In a wide range of mammals— herbivores and predators, large and small — domestication seems to have brought with it strikingly similar changes in appearance and behavior: changes in size, changes in coat color (e.g., spotted), animals’ reproductive cycles, docility. • Of 148 large terrestrial herbivorous mammals, only 14 have been successfully domesticated
Among wild mammal species that were never domesticated, the six main obstacles proved to be a diet not easily supplied by humans (hence no domestic anteaters), slow growth rate and long birth spacing (for example, elephants and gorillas), nasty disposition (grizzly bears and rhinoceroses), reluctance to breed in captivity (pandas and cheetahs), lack of follow-the-leader dominance hierarchies (bighorn sheep and antelope), and tendency to panic in enclosures or when faced with predators (gazelles and deer, except reindeer). J. Diamond, Nature (2002)
Geographic positions of European and Near Eastern pig haplotypes over the past 13,000 years Larson G et al. PNAS 2007; 104:15276-15281
Landscape domestication and management of non-domesticated plants and animals and incipient or semi-domesticates: Fish-farming
Early Farming Towns Food production and more sedentary ways of life resulted in growth in settlement size and provided foundation for numerous cultural innovations outside of subsistence Domestication and settled village life were traditionally seen as happening more or less simultaneously, although more recent research shows a more complicated story
Thomas Malthus An essay on the principle of population as it affects the future improvement of society (1798) Population naturally grows until something dramatic occurs Population growth kept in check through mortality (misery, war, famine, epidemics) Neo-Malthusian premise: population growth is dependent variable, determined by preceding changes in subsistence potential as population reaches critical threshold, or “carrying capacity,” population growth is checked (held in place) by some cultural or natural factor (contraception, infanticide, disease, famine)
Neo-Malthusian View: Revolutionary Change Population growth dependent on technology Intensive agriculture Horticulture Food Foraging
Ester Boserup Made population growth the independent variable Technology will respond when population growth approaches critical threshold (carrying capacity) creating demographic stress Agriculture emerges due to population pressure (demographic stress) and expanded “diet breadth” The Conditions of Agricultural Growth: The Economics of Agrarian Change under Population Pressure (1965)
Carrying capacity Mathusian = Black (population = dependent variable) Boserupian = Red (population = independent variable)
Oasis theory (Childe; SW Asia; neo-Mathusian) • Natural habitat zone (Braidwood; SW Asia; neo-Mathusian) • Marginal zone (Binford & Flannery; SW Asia and Mesoamerica; Boserupian) • Co-evolution (David Rindos; Darwinian) • Domesticated landscapes (dwelling): coupled human-natural systems (versus species population domestication)
