1. Guns, Germs, and Steel: Part 2
Social Stratification

2. What is a Typology?

3. Axes
Note: Why this map?
Eurasia
The Americas
Africa 3

4. Development Diagram Ultimate Factors East/West Axis
Many suitable wild species
Ease of species spreading
Many domesticated plant and animal species
Food surpluses, food storage
Large, dense, sedentary, stratified societies
technology
Proximate Factors
horses
Guns, steel swords
Ocean-going ships
Political organization, writing
Epidemic disease

5. What’s our typology? What are the possible trajectories?
Can we create a typology out of those trajectories?
Examples?
Countries:

6. Farmer Power
Hunting-gathering as an economic system is nearly extinct and probably will be in the next few decades
We are all switching to advanced agriculture…
What is the benefit of agriculture? Why switch from hunting/gathering to agriculture?
Transforms the percentage of edible biomass from 0.1% per acre to up to 90% per acre
Agriculture can feed 10 to 100 times more people than hunting/gathering
What about herding and domestication of animals?
Meat, milk, fertilizer, and plows
Warmth? Companionship? Clothing?
War?
Is vegetarianism ideal?

7. Farmer Power
What does the “sedentary” lifestyle of agriculturists have to do with child production? Does it increase or decrease reproduction?
Hunter/gatherers have to take the kids with them (2 vs. 4 year intervals)
What about food surplus? How does staying in one place facilitate this? Why is this a “good” thing?
What else does food surplus do for development?
Specialization (Is this important?)
(and, ultimately, inequality)

8. Farmer Power Why did agriculture develop where it did?
Why did agriculture develop when it did?

9. Centers of origin of food production
Fertile Crescent
China
Eastern U.S.
Sahel?
Mesoamerica
Amazonia?
New Guinea?
West Africa?
Ethiopia?
Andes
Why did food production not evolve in large, geographically suitable areas of the globe? 9

10. Species Domesticated Area Plants Animals Date Southwest Asia
Wheat, pea, olive
Sheep, goat
8,500 BCE
China
Rice, millet
Pig, silkworm
By 7,500 BCE
Mesoamerica
Corn, beans, squash
Turkey
By 3,500 BCE
Andes and Amazonia
Potato, manioc
Llama, guinea, pig
Eastern U.S.
Sunflower, goosefoot
None
2,500 BCE
? Sahel
Sorghum, African rice
Guinea fowl
By 5,000 BCE
? Tropical West Africa
African yams, oil palm
By 3,000 BCE
? Ethiopia
Coffee, teff ?
? New Guinea
Sugar cane, banana
By 7,000 BCE

11. To Farm or Not to Farm How did food production come about?
You can’t really make a choice between farming and hunting/gathering if you only know hunting/gathering, right?
Isn’t a hard and fast distinction – many hunter/gatherers intensively manage the land they roam (burning, clearing, etc.)

12. To Farm or Not to Farm
“Most peasant farmers and herders… aren’t necessarily better off than hunter-gatherers. Time budget studies show that they may spend more rather than fewer hours per day at work than hunter-gatherers do.” (p. 105)
So, why switch?
“All other things being equal, people seek to maximize their return of calories, protein, or other specific food categories by foraging in a way that yields the most return with the greatest certainty in the least time for the least effort.” (p. 108; anyone recognize the sociological/economic theory here?)

13. To Farm or Not to Farm
Hunting/gathering and food production are alternative strategies: What were the factors that tipped the competitive advantage away from the former and toward the latter?
Decline in the availability of wild foods
Increased availability of domesticable wild plants made plant domestication more rewarding
Cumulative development of technologies on which food production would become dependent – collection, processing, storage
Two-way link between the rise in human population density and the rise in food production
Chicken and egg dilemma – What’s the answer?
This also explains the dates – started around 8,500 BCE because of these four.

14. How to Make an Almond
Plant domestication is growing a plant and thereby consciously or unconsciously causing it to change genetically from its wild ancestor in ways making it more useful to human consumers.
How did certain wild plants get turned into crops?
One logical explanation – humans (or other animals) eat the plant, defecate the seed, and it germinates in our feces; we also gather and spit, etc.
But how does this change the genetics of the plant?
“It may come as a surprise to learn that plant seeds can resist digestion by your gut and nonetheless germinate out of your feces. But any adventurous readers who are not too squeamish can make the test and prove it for themselves.” (p. 116)
5 bonus points if you do this successfully and document it with photos

15. How to Make an Almond Other inadvertent ways we change crops:
Mechanism for dispersal of seeds (popping pea pods)
Changed hard coat so all the seeds germinate immediately
Changed form of reproduction (seedless fruits – e.g., bananas)
Why are some plants easier to domesticate than others?
First domesticates:
Wild versions are already edible and have high yields
More easily grown
Grow quickly and can be harvested easily
Easily stored
Self-pollinating
Very little genetic change to become domesticated
Next wave:
Take longer to produce (e.g., fruit trees), but that is okay with sedentary farmers
Last wave:
Required new technologies (e.g., grafting)

16. Major Crop Domesticates
All of these were domesticated basically by the time of the Roman empire.
Area
Cereals, other grasses
Pulses
Fiber
Roots, tubers
Melons
Fertile Crescent
Emmer wheat, einkorn wheat, barley
Pea, lentil, chickpea
Flax -
Muskmelon
China
Foxtail millet, broomcorn millet
Soybean, adzuki bean, mung bean
Hemp
[muskmelon]
Mesoamerica
Corn
Common bean, tepary bean, scarlet
Cotton, yucca, agave
Jicama
Squashes
Andes, Amazonia
Quinoa, [corn]
Lima bean, common bean, peanut
Cotton
Manioc, sweet potato, potato, oca
West Africa and Sahel
Sorghum, pearl millet, African rice
Cowpea, groundnut
African yams
Watermelon, bottle gourd
India
[wheat, barley, rice, sorghum, millets]
Hyacinth bean, black gram, green gram
Cucumber
Ethiopia
Teff, finger millet
[pea, lentil]
[flax]
Eastern U.S.
Maygrass, little barley, knotweed, goosefoot
Jerusalem artichoke
Squash
New Guinea
Sugar cane
Yams, taro

17. Apples or Indians
Why did agriculture never arise independently in some fertile and highly suitable areas, such as California, Europe, temperate Australia, and subequatorial Africa?
Why did it arise in some areas earlier than others?
Is this a people problem or a plant problem?
Over 200,000 species of flowering plants
But a dozen account for over 80% of the modern production:
Wheat, corn, rice, barley, sorghum, soybean, potato, manioc, sweet potato, sugarcane, sugar beet, banana.
What did you eat today?
Have we really not domesticated any new plants in recent times?
We’ve modified the ones we have, but we haven’t domesticated any new ones.

18. Apples or Indians
Is the flora and environment really that different between the areas where crops developed and where they did not?
What advantages did the Fertile Crescent have?
Climate: Mediterranean – mild, wet winters, long, hot, dry summers
Rapid plant growth when the rain returns; very little woody body and large seeds (that we can eat)
Lots of candidates for domestication
Little modification required…

19. Teosinte vs. Corn (Americas)
From this
To this.

20. Spelt vs. Common Wheat
From this
To this.

21. Mediterranean Climates
Fertile Crescent
California
Southwest Australia
South Africa
Chile 21

22. Five Advantages of Fertile Crescent
Largest zone of Mediterranean climate
Means greater diversity
Greatest climatic variation from season to season
Favors evolution (why?)
Wide range of altitudes and topographies
Greater diversity
Greater biological diversity of mammals as well
Not much competition from hunter-gatherer lifestyle
not many coastal areas

23. Limitations of New Guinea
Not much biodiversity:
No cereal crops – no large-seeded wild grasses are native
No domesticable large mammals
Low protein foods
Pot-bellies of high-bulk, protein-deficient diets (cannibalism)

24. Apples or Indians
Do you know the local plants? Do you know which are edible and which are not?
Do hunter-gatherers know local plants?
Our ancestors consistently picked those best suited for our consumption
So, why did some regions not domesticate plants (or did so really late) and others did?

25. Domesticable Mammals Candidates for domestication:
Terrestrial herbivore weighing on the average over 100 pounds
Eurasia
Sub-Saharan Africa
The Americas
Australia
Candidates 72 51 24 1
Domesticated 13

26. 14 Domestic Mammals Animal Wild ancestor Date (BCE) location Sheep
Asiatic mouflon sheep
8000
West and Central Asia
Goat
Bezoar goat
West Asia
Cow
Aurochs
6000
Eurasia and North Africa
Pig
Wild boar
Horse
Wild horses
4000
Southern Russia
(minor 9)
Arabian camel (1-hump)
Wild camel
2500
Arabia
Bactrian camel (2-hump)
Central Asia
Llama and Alpaca
Guanaco
3500
Andes
Donkey
African wild ass
North Africa
Reindeer
Wild reindeer
Northern Eurasia
Water buffalo
Wild water buffalo
Southeast Asia
Yak
Wild yak
Himalayas and Tibet
Bali cattle
Banteng
Mithan
Gaur
India and Burma
Eurasian?

27. The Anna Karenina Principle
“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” (p. 157)
Success actually requires avoiding many separate possible causes of failure; 6 areas:
Diet - 10% conversion ratio
(10,000 lbs of corn to grow a 1,000 pound cow)
Which animals are ruled out?
What does this say about vegetarianism?
Growth rate – the faster they growth, the better
Problems of captive breeding
Which animals are rules out?

28. The Anna Karenina Principle
6 areas continued:
Nasty disposition – if they can kill a human and do…
Which animals are ruled out?
Tendency to panic – problem in pens and around humans
Social Structure – 3 characteristics
Live in herds
Well-developed dominance hierarchy
Overlapping home ranges
Why?

29. Axes
Eurasia
The Americas
Africa 29

30. Spacious Skies and Tilted Axes
Why did food production spread more rapidly in Eurasia than in Africa or The Americas?
Same latitude share:
Day length
Seasonal variation
Similar diseases
Regimes of temperature and rainfall
Habitats or biomes
Most Eurasian crops came from a single forerunner – they spread rapidly (p. 188)

31. Questions
If you were a hunter-gatherer what would your reasons be of not becoming a farmer?
Which groups do you think had the most chance of surviving: the hunter-gathers, the farmers, or the group of people that combined the hunter/gatherer’s life style with certain components of the farmer’s lifestyle and why?
Do you think there is a way to eventually solve the “chicken-and- egg” problem: Did rising population cause food production, or did food production cause population to increase?
Why did Australia have no domesticated species? Because of it’s isolation, geography, or both?

32. Questions
I find it weird that people believe the large animals, “picked the 23rd to expire in concert, in the presence of all those supposedly harmless humans.” Clearly they had something to do with the disappearance of these animals. What might the world have been like had they not been killed?
What were the most important advantages of the Fertile Crescent?
On page 88 it was said that "most biomass on land is in the form of wood and leaves" but if there was more biomass available for humans would it change human societies that much?
Gasp... what if there were no horses?? (did we answer this last week?)
What were those pictures of/about or their significance (other than the captions listed under them)?

33. Questions
Did the hunter-gatherers in 11,000 BCE have a lot of children? Is there any way for us to know what the average fertility rate was?
Have there been experiments done with the New Guineans in America? For example, have they been shown pictures of cities or have they seen movies? Do they have the desire to use our weapons and tools or do they not know that it is an option?
Why can reindeer be domesticated while all other deer cannot?
Would other areas such as Africa or the Americas become dominant if Eurasia hadn't become so first?
What were some of the early farming practices that allowed agriculture to develop? Also, what were the key inventions and advancements that contributed to farming?

34. Questions
Diamond (pp ) identifies the emergence from the Ice Age nearly 13,000 years ago as a factor increasing human population densities, a factor that operated both independently of and as a causal factor for the rise of food production. If this is true, did the geographical effects of the end of the Ice Age provide the same impetus for population growth all over the world, or was Mesopotamia favored once more by geography in this case?
Diamond (pp ) explains some nuances regarding the differences between food production and hunting/gathering. Neither a sedentary society nor “active managers of land” seems to correspond absolutely with a “food producing” society. What, then, is the key difference between hunting/gathering and food production? Does it have to do with genetic modification of crops/animals versus simply collecting them?