Diversity In Early Agriculture

In the different places where agriculture developed, people domesticated a wide variety of plants and animals. Agriculture in the Tigris an Euphrates river valley of SouthWest Asia was based in growing wheat and barley and on raising sheep, goats, and cattle. Throughout the Nile Valley in North Africa, agriculture produced wheat, barley, flax, sheep, goats, cattle and pigs.
Meanwhile, in the Americas, early farmers began growing beans and chili peppers in the mountain valleys of what is now Peru and potatoes in what is now Bolivia. Plants later domesticated in the Americas included squash, gourdsm guavas, and maize orcorn.
At the begining, agriculture offered another way besides hunting and gathering for people to subsist, or survive. In many places agriculture led to year-round villages and more complex societies. People did not always stay in one place, however. Many groups went migrating, searching for new land for their crops and fresh pastures for their herds.

Questions: ,

1. Clearing forest land today affects the environment just as clearing wild plants did long ago. What were the effects then? What are the effects now?
2. How did people in our society cooperate in day-to-day living?
3. What is meant by diversity of agriculture?

References:

Lamb, Karl. "Lamb Chiropractic: Chiropractic Orthopedics & Clinical Nutrition." 3. Print.
Boehm, Richard, and Claudia Hoone. Our World's Story. 1. New York, Toronto, London: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1997. 38. Print.

Effects of Change

Agriculture, the raising of domesticated plants and animals, changed forever the societies that practiced it. Agriculture provided a reliable food source. Food production increased as people invented tools, such as the plow, and came up with refinements, such as domesticating cattle to pull plows and collecting water for crops. Agriculture made more food available, but it also made living conditions more difficult in some ways. Instead of finding deaths due to starvation and disease when drought and insect attacks killed crops and livestock. there were also deaths due to wars when people fought to protect farmland or to take land away from others.

Questions:
1. What new way of getting food changed societies forever?
2. How did early people become producers? how did this change affect early societies?
3. Why did ancient societies based on agriculture feel a need ro control land while hunter-gatherer societies did not?

References:

Boehm, Richard, and Claudia Hoone. Our World's Story. 1. New York, Toronto, London: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1997. 38. Print.
Clay, Charles. "Farming Tools in the Stone Age." (2011): 1. Print., http://www.ehow.co.uk/info_8439240_farming-tools-stone-age.html

Early Farmers

About 10 000 years ago some early people in hunter-gathered socities began to produce some of their food. This change was important because of their food supply was no longer limited to what they could find or hunt. People leaned to domesticate both plants and animals. Women did most of the food gathering in early societies and were probably the first to domesticate plants.

 Some societies soon came to depend less on wild plants and more on crops grown in small gardens by early farmers. Growinv crops, however, meant that those societies had to stay in one place. The process of planting, caring for, and harvesting crops takes many months to constant care. Early farming societies built year-round shelters, formed small villages, and grew crops on the surrounding land. These societies economy, or the way people use resources tp meet their needs, became based on mainly on their crops.

Questions:

1. How did early people get the food they needed to survive?
2. How did living and working in groups help early poeple survive?
3. For what purposes besides getting food might early people have worked together?

Refrences:

"Chronological History of the World Unit Study for Homeschoolers." Paleolithic Age. 5. Print.,http://www.squidoo.com/chronologicalearthhistorystudies2

Boehm, Richard, and Claudia Hoone. Our World's Story. 1. New York, Toronto, London: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1997. 38. Print.

People Of The Stone Age

Welcome to our class,
In this course you will learn about the sudden emergence of full human creativity among the advanced hunters of this period that is one of the most astonishing chapters in all history!