THE BEGINNINGS OF FOOD PRODUCTION

Early Domestication of Plants and Animals

Settled agriculture, the application of human labor and tools to a fixed plot of land for more than one growing cycle, entails the changeover from a hunting and gathering lifestyle to one based on agriculture, which requires staying in one place until the soil has been exhausted. Around 9000 BCE, abundant rainfall and mild winters created optimal conditions in Southwest Asia for humans to settle down. Here the first breakthroughs occurred, particularly in geographically bounded regions where relatively large populations were pressing on resources, where stable warm and wet climates abounded, and where there was an abundance of plants and animals that could be domesticated. In these areas, hunters and gatherers were now able to meet their subsistence needs and could afford to settle in a single location. They did so in greater numbers than before, learning to exploit mountainous areas covered with forest vegetation and home to wild sheep, wild goats, and long-horned wild oxen. In attractive locations such as the valleys of the Taurus Mountains in Upper Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq and Syria), the Anatolian plateau (in modern-day Turkey), and the hillsides of present-day northern Israel, early humans began to establish permanent settlements and to herd once-wild animals and cultivate once-wild grains.

The formation of these communities enabled humans to take risks, spurring agricultural innovation. With abundant wild game and edible plants, people could observe and experiment with the most adaptable plants and animals. For ages, people had been gathering grains by collecting seeds that fell freely from their stalks. At some point, observant collectors perceived that they could obtain larger harvests if they pulled grain seeds directly from plants. The process of plant domestication probably began when people noticed that certain edible plants retained their nutritious grains longer than others, so they collected these seeds and scattered them across fertile soils. When ripe, these plants produced bigger and hardier crops. People used most seeds for food but saved some for planting in the next growing cycle, to ensure a food supply for the next year. The gradual domestication of plants began in the southern Levant and spread from there into the rest of Southwest Asia. Even so, by 5,000 years ago (around 3,000 BCE), most of the major regions of the world had made agricultural breakthroughs. The result was that all the basic crops that we consume today had been domesticated: wheat and barley in Southwest Asia; sorghum and yams in Africa; maize and potatoes in the Americas; and rice and millet in East Asia.

DOMESTICATION OF ANIMALS If dogs are humans’ best friends, we are now beginning to learn how long and important that friendship has been. Dogs were the first animals to be domesticated (although in fact they may have adopted humans, rather than the other way around). At least 33,000 years ago in China and central Asia, including Mongolia and Nepal, humans first domesticated gray wolves and made them an essential part of human society. These animals did more than comfort humans, however, for they provided a vital example of how to achieve the domestication of other animals. Moreover, dogs with herding instincts aided humans in controlling sheep once they had been domesticated.

Wild sheep and wild goats were the next animals to come under human control. This process took place in the central Zagros Mountains region in present-day western Iraq, where wild sheep and wild goats were abundant. A favored explanation is that hunters returned home with young wild sheep, which then grew up within the human community. They reproduced, and their offspring never returned to the wild. The animals accepted their dependence because the humans fed them. As it became clear that controlling animal reproduction was more reliable than hunting, domesticated herds became the primary source of protein in the early human diet. This shift probably happened first with the wild sheep living in herds on the mountain slopes.

When the number of animals under human control and living close to the settlement outstripped the supply of food needed to feed the human population, community members could move the animals to grassy steppes for grazing. This lifestyle, called pastoralism (the herding of domesticated animals), later became an important subsistence strategy that complemented settled farming. Pastoralists herded domesticated animals, moving them to new pastures on a seasonal basis. Goats, the other main domesticated animal of Southwest Asia, are smarter than sheep but more difficult to control. The pastoralists may have introduced goats into herds of sheep to better control herd movement. Pigs and cattle also came under human control at this time.

Pastoralists and Agriculturalists

Pastoralism, which involved the herding of sheep and goats but also cattle, appeared as a way of life around 5500 BCE, essentially at the same time that full-time farming appeared. The first pastoralists were closely affiliated with agricultural villages whose inhabitants grew grains, especially wheat and barley, which required large parcels of land. Pastoralists produced both meat and dairy products, as well as wool for textiles, and exchanged these products with the agriculturalists for grain, pottery, and other staples. In the Fertile Crescent, many extended families farmed and herded at the same time, growing crops in fertile flatlands and grazing their herds in the foothills and mountains nearby. These herders moved their livestock seasonally, usually pasturing their flocks in higher lands during summer and in valleys during winter. This movement over short distances is called transhumance and did not require herders to vacate their primary locations, which were generally in the mountain valleys.