Origins of Agriculture

Agriculture
• Selection, breeding and management of
crops and domestic animals for economic
production and food.

• The cultivation of domesticated plants and

animals for use by human societies.
Importance of agricultural systems to
mankind
• What was life like before agriculture?

• Where do we start to form a baseline from

which we can visualize the domestication of
plants and the emergence of agriculture?

• What kind of plants did man eat before

today's crops became available?
How do we answer these questions?
Three general approaches
1. Study surviving non-agricultural societies and
examine the ethnographic observations made
within the last few centuries
San

Courtesy of: Smith B, The Emergence of agriculture

2. Interpret pre-agricultural life from artefacts,
refuse and other clues left by ancient man and
recovered by archaeological techniques
Incas- the temple of the sun
View of
agricultural
terraces and
guard house _
the Incas
The Sacred Valley
 Ancient civilizations
• Greece

• Persia

• Egypt

• Timbuktu

• China
 3. The geographic distribution of wild relatives
of a crop provides a general idea about its
origins – careful botanic explorations
• Area with the greatest
genetic variation
thought to be the
centre of origin
• Wild relatives of wheat
(Near East), maize
(Mexico) sorghum
• Nikolai Vavilov (Africa) , potato (Peru)
• Has been questioned?
 Origins of agriculture
4
More gracile,
nimble and clever
3.5
relative of H.
nearnderthalensis ;
3 spread from Africa
Larger brain
Predecessors to other continents;
size; body
Years ago (millions)

of H. sapiens in displaced H.
2.5 height like
Europe, Near nearnderthalensis ;
modern
East and greater mastery of
humans;
2 northern Africa; tool-making
gathering and
lived in small techniques; made
scavenging.
bands ropes, sewn
First to master
1.5 practicing clothing; jewelery;
fire (500 000
cooperative believed in afterlife;
Walking on yrs ago) and
hunting; cared cave painters (keen
1 hindlegs Enlarged body to migrate out for their sick sense of
freed hands and brain; of Africa to
and buried their observation of
to manipulate stone tools Asia and
0.5 dead environ. and food
objects appeared Indonesia
sources)

0
Australlopithecus Homo habilis Homo erectus Homo Homo sapiens
afarensis neanderthalensis
 Hunting and gathering
• Mankind has existed on earth for about 2
million years
• 99% of this period spent hunting and
gathering
• To date the hunting way has been the most
successful and persistent adaptation man has
ever achieved.
 Plants used by hunter-gatherers
• Grass seeds ca. 60 spp.
• Legumes ca. 50 spp.
• Roots and tubers ca. 90 spp.
• Oil seeds ca. 60 spp.
• Fruits and nuts > 500 spp.
• Vegetables and spices > 600 spp.
Total > 1410 spp.

Source: List of Foods Used in Africa (Jardin, 1967)

History of Agriculture
Gorilla

Hominoid Pan

Modern
Homo Homo sapiens
Man

7 5 2 Million years 0.25 0.01

99.999 0.001
Percentage genome record
Hunter gatherers

Spoken
A
language
 10,000 years
• Man begun to
• domesticate plants and animals,

• use metals

• harness energy sources other than the human

body…
 10,000 years
10000 8000 2500 0 500 1000 1500 1700 1800 1900 1950 2000 2012 2013

Agriculture
Agric revolution
Feudal agriculture
Modern agriculture

Green
Revolution

Genetic engineering

Written
language Scientific agriculture
Hunter gatherer
Cropping systems

Agro pastoral

Agro forestry

Inter cropping

Sole cropping
 Modern agriculture
350, 000 vascular
plants
195,000 flowering Wheat
plants

Cultivated or
harvested crops
300 species

17 species provide 90% Rice

of mans food supply
and occupy 75% of
tilled land

~60-75 %
Maize
human diet
3 species
Modern agriculture: Agricultural knowledge systems

6000
languages

3000 languages
Less than 10,000
speakers

1500
Languages
Less than
1000
Mandarin
speakers
Spanish
8 languages English
>50% Arabic
humanity Hindu/Urdu
Portuguese
Bengali
Russian
 Questions ???
• What was life like before agriculture?

• Where do we start to form a baseline from which we can visualize

the domestication of plants and the emergence of agriculture?

• What kind of plants did man eat before today's crops became
available?

• What was the spatial pattern of agricultural origin and expansion?

• Why did hunting and gathering people turn to agriculture and the
domestication of animals?
Theories on the origin of agriculture
 1. Agriculture as a divine gift
• Classical mythology of all civilizations and the basis is
that agriculture is fundamentally of divine origin

• Mediterranean region (goddess)

• Egypt (Isis)

• Greece(Demeter)

• China (the ox-headed god Shen-nung)

• Mexico (Quetzalcoatl)
 The Bible; The Book of Genesis
• Agriculture came as a curse;
• “ 3.17…cursed is the ground for thy sake; in
sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;
• 3.18 Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to
thee; and thou shall eat the herb of the field;
3.19 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat
bread, till you return to the ground; for out of it
wast thou taken; for dust thou art and unto dust
shalt thou return”
 Was this a punishment or a blessing?
Hunter-gatherer
• 3.22 “And the Lord God
said, Behold, the man is
become as one of us, to
know good and evil; and
now, lest he puts forth his
hand and take also of the
tree of life , and eat and
live forever;
Agriculture
• 3.23 Therefore the Lord
God sent him forth from
the Garden of Eden, to till
the ground from whence he
was taken”
2. Domestication for religious reasons
• Eduard Hahn
(1896,1909)
• Domestication out of
religious concern rather
than economic reasons
• Bos taurus as a model
• Extended to other
animals and plants
(Anderson, 1954)
 Arguments for the model
• Large and fierce beasts
• Impossible
– To predict the usefulness of domesticated cattle.
– Foresee their utility for labour and milk before they were
tamed.
• So what motivated man to tame them?
– the need for ritual sacrifices to the moon goddess cults
because of the crescent shape of their horns.
• Sacred to the Egyptians, were sacrificed by the
Romans and are still considered holy by the Hindus of
India and are used in bullfighting rituals in Spain
Chicken
 Chicken
• Domesticated from the Jungle Fowl of
southern and southern eastern Asia.
• In parts of Asia, chickens are raised but
neither the flesh nor eggs are eaten.
• Used for
– sacrifice,
– divination by examining the entrails ,
– cock fighting
 Animals as substitutes for human
sacrifices and ritual killings
• Ancient South American civilizations and the sun
god

• Abraham and Isaac ???

• Jesus Christ ???

• Probably sheep, goats, pigs etc. were used in

sacrifices as a substitute for human beings
Bezoar goat (Capra aegagrus)
 Examples of plants
• The blood red
inflorescence of
Amaranths is used in
religious ceremonies of
ancient South America
• In India the pigment from
a plant species is used in
Hindu rituals
• The Aztecs used grains in
their human sacrifices
consuming grain popped
in human blood?
 3. Domestication by crowding
• “Propinquity theory” (V. Gordon Childe , 1952)
• Changes in climatic conditions of North Africa and
parts of the Near East Waterless

• May have caused the rangelands to dry up

• Forcing herd animals and man as well to move to the

banks of the few perennial rivers and to oases where
water could be found all year round.

• Close contact lead to domestication

4. Agriculture as discovery
• Was cultivation an invention or a discovery?
“The happy accident” (Charles Darwin, 1896)

• No motive was required for the development

of agriculture.

• All you needed was the idea then the

development of agriculture was assured.
 The Darwinian View
• Savage inhabitants
• Experimentation - useful plants
• Planted them near their caves, or shelters in
heaps of manure
• Improved varieties would sooner or later arise
• A wise old savage was necessary to start the
process by noticing the improved variety and
planting it
 Carl O Sauer (1952)- Agricultural
origins and dispersals
• Combined Darwin and Hahn`s ideas

• Hypothesized that vegetative propagation

should precede seed agriculture and set out
to locate the cradle of agriculture on
theoretical grounds
 Six presuppositions (Sauer, 1952)
(a) Agriculture did not originate from a growing or
chronic shortage of food. (see crowding, Childe, 1925)
• People living in the shadow of famine do not have the
means or time to undertake the steps for the
development of an improved future food supply
system
(b) The areas of diversity are to be sought in areas of
marked diversity of plants and animals…
• Implies a well –diversified terrain and perhaps a
variety of climate (early Holocene –equable
climates/humid phase)
 Continued…
(c) Primitive cultivators could not establish
themselves in large river valleys subject to
lengthy floods and requiring protective dams,
drainage or irrigation…
• River Nile, The Fertile Crescent
(d) Agriculture began in wooded lands
(e) The inventors of agriculture had previously
acquired special skills in other directions that
predisposed them to agricultural experiments
(Darwin)
(f) Founders of agriculture were sedentary folk
 Edgar Anderson (1954)
• Added some genetic perspective to Sauer`s
theoretical considerations.
• Weeds as potential domesticates
• An increase in hybridization, with disturbed
habitats could result in increased variation
and new genetic combinations
• Source from which useful selections could be
made
 Questions on the Sauer-Anderson
model
• The Sauer-Anderson models has been widely
accepted by many people, however, they are
still open to questions

• For example, is sedentary life essential for the

evolution of agriculture? (Semi – nomadic
groups?)
 5. Agriculture by stress

• Agriculture was adopted as a result of stress

brought on by an increase in population and
depletion of the foraging ranges (Mark
Cohen, The Food Crisis in Prehistory, 1977).
 Was it population pressure?
• Not really?
• Populations of hunter-gatherers

– Well below the carrying capacity of the range and

the environment

– Did not exert pressure on man to change his food

procurement systems.
 6. Agriculture as an extension of
gathering
• Why should people farm when it costs less in
terms of energy and effort to collect food?

• Increasing food supply through cultivation

means an increase in work

• Why was man more willing to expend energy

to get food?
 The Binford-Flannery Model (1968)
• Gatherers were sophisticated, applied
botanists who knew their material and how to
exploit them (traditional medicine?)

• Were prepared to grow plants if and when

they think it would be worth the effort

• The difference between intensive gathering

(digging tubers) and cultivation was minimal
 The Binford-Flannery Model (1968)
• Post-Pleistoscene (The Ice age) adaptations of
man- the exploitation of aquatic resources
(fishing)
• Canoes , boats and rafts were developed
• Sedentary fishing folk appeared in many parts
of the world
• Groups broke out and migrated into less well
endowed regions and ecological zones
 The Binford-Flannery Model (1968)

• The fisher folk remained stable , but migrants

precipitated a crisis along the interface
between sedentary peoples and the nomadic
hunter-gatherers.

• It was in response to this crisis that people

were willing to go the effort of cultivation
 7. Domestication by perception
• Derived from folklore of subsistence farmers and
clues on perceptions of surviving hunter-
gatherers
• Based on world-wide distribution of tales on
agricultural origins –
• Ancient people lived in a world full of demons
and spirits
• Origin of agriculture may be perceived to have
began from areas that were perceived to be safe
 The Kuruk from North America
• Hunter-gatherers but grew tobacco for
ceremonial purposes

• Afraid of wild tobacco because they thought it

may have sprouted from the grave of
someone with bad spirits (so tobacco was
planted in safe gardens)
Every model proposed has generated
evidence against it?
 For example,
• It is possible that some plants and animals were
domesticated for ritual, magic or religious sacrifice
• … but only a few out of hundreds can be so
identified..
• It is possible that a few cultigens originated from dump
heaps
• …but many do not show such inclination
• Some people were sedentary long before agriculture;
• others maintained a nomadic life long after plants
were domesticated and agriculture established
 The no model concept
• Jack R Harlan(1992) proposes a humanistic
no model concept that simply recognizes the
likelihood that no single model will explain
agricultural origins
• Human beings are highly variable with very
complex motivations
• A search for a single overriding cause for
human behavior is unrealistic
 The no model concept
• There are no facts to support the no model
concept , however…
• It takes into account “…the possibility that
plant domestication began in different
regions for different reasons and permits us
to build theories on evidence as it
accumulates…”
 In conclusion
• The greatest difficulties in understanding
agricultural origins trace to a want of
information and no amount of speculation can
substitute for evidence
• Some advances have been made in the
century…however, we are still far from
determining the motivation that brought
about such a profound change in human
adaptation
 The Geography of Plant
Domestication and crop origins
 De Candolle (19th Century)
• Origin of cultivated plants (reprinted in 1959)
• Geography of plants in general
• Investigated the distribution of wild relatives,
history, names, linguistic derivatives,
archeology, variation patterns etc…
• Attempted to locate the region of origin of
many plants
 Nikolai Vavilov
• Interested in collecting all the crops that had
potential in the Soviet Union
• Thought that the origins of a crop was related
to genetic diversity
• Hypothesis: that the geographic region in
which one found the greatest diversity was
the region of origin
The eight centres of origin according to N.I. Vavilov ): Courtesy of Harlan
1971
 Centre of diversity and origin???
• Not the same

• The geography of crop variation depends on

the geography of human history

• Many of the crops did not originate from

Vavilovian centres
An ecological approach
(Harlan, 1992)
Major Climate or Vegetation formation
1. Tundra and taiga
2. Temperate forests
3. Temperate prairies
4. Temperate steppes
5. Mediterranean woodlands
6. Tropical forests
7. Tropical savanna
8. Deserts
9. Tropical highlands
10. Sea coasts
Centre – a
relatively
small region
where plants
and animals
were
domesticated
then diffused
outward

Non- centre –
large regions
where
activities of
domestication
went on
everywhere
Centres and non centres of agricultural origins: A1, Near East
Centre; A2, African non centre; B1, North Chinese centre;
B2, South east Asian and South Pacific non centre; C1,
Mesoamerican centre; C2, South American non center
Tropical savannahs and dry forests and tropical highlands
The map indicates the general regions where crops are believed to
have originated. In some cases the origins are uncertain (non-
centres). Courtesy of the National Germplasm Systems Plant
Exchange Office
Gepts P (2004) Plant Breeding Reviews, Volume 24, Part 2,
Edited by Jules Janick. John Wiley and Sons Inc