Guns, Germs and Steel cont.
We continued watching the documentary based off of Jared Diamond's book, Guns, Germs, and Steel. In our viewing, we learned that all great ancient civilizations, including Egypt, Maya, Rome, Mesopotamia, and Greece, had three things in common: advanced technology for the time, large population for the time, and a well-organized workforce.
We then looked further into the hunter-gatherer lifestyles of people living in the jungles in Papua New Guinea, one of the few places where people still live this way. People hunted with bows and arrows, and gathered pulp from trees to make food.
After this, we learnt about Draa, one of the oldest known permanent villages. In a time where everyone was living a nomadic, hunter-gatherer lifestyle in groups of roughly a dozen, a group of 40-50 people were living in Draa, in the Jordan valley near the Dead Sea. People living in Draa were the first people to domesticate plants, specifically grains like wheat and barley. Since they were no longer nomadic and weren't following their food around, the people of Draa grew their food near their village and stored it in a mud hut granary in the center of the village. By picking the plants with traits they liked, they were unknowingly breeding the grains to accommodate their needs and wants for their food. We do this today in labs and on farms, crossbreeding plants like apples to produce different produce that people will buy.
Plant domestication is essentially farming, since the people of Draa were controlling their food source to better feed them, making them the first farmers in the world.
We then looked further into the hunter-gatherer lifestyles of people living in the jungles in Papua New Guinea, one of the few places where people still live this way. People hunted with bows and arrows, and gathered pulp from trees to make food.
After this, we learnt about Draa, one of the oldest known permanent villages. In a time where everyone was living a nomadic, hunter-gatherer lifestyle in groups of roughly a dozen, a group of 40-50 people were living in Draa, in the Jordan valley near the Dead Sea. People living in Draa were the first people to domesticate plants, specifically grains like wheat and barley. Since they were no longer nomadic and weren't following their food around, the people of Draa grew their food near their village and stored it in a mud hut granary in the center of the village. By picking the plants with traits they liked, they were unknowingly breeding the grains to accommodate their needs and wants for their food. We do this today in labs and on farms, crossbreeding plants like apples to produce different produce that people will buy.
Plant domestication is essentially farming, since the people of Draa were controlling their food source to better feed them, making them the first farmers in the world.
Comments
Post a Comment