Exam 11: The First Farmers

The path from foraging to food production was one that people followed independently in at least seven world areas.One of these areas is what is now southern Egypt,where excavations at Nabta Playa

Anthropologists once thought that domestication would happen almost automatically once people gained sufficient knowledge of plants and animals and their reproductive habits to figure out how to make domestication work.They now know that

Where were beans domesticated?

The domestication of plants and animals for food independently occurred in both the Old World and the Americas approximately 11,000 years ago.

Anthropologists once thought,erroneously,that domestication would happen almost automatically once people gained sufficient knowledge of plants and animals.How has their view changed?

What is the name of the wild ancestor of maize?

Compared to those of wild plants,the seeds of domesticated plants are larger and less likely to shatter and disperse.

In the New World,sedentism occurred before domestication.

Nabta Playa was an important center for prehistoric herders in southern Egypt.

The domesticated millet that appeared in China around 7500 B.P. was first domesticated in sub-Saharan Africa by about 8000 B.P., then diffused to China through long-distance trade networks.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of a subsistence economy based on farming?

What is broad-spectrum foraging,and why is it important in understanding the shift to farming?

Unlike the pattern in the Old World,plant domestication in the New World

Which of the following was a consequence of domestication?

One of the most significant contrasts between Old and New World food production involved animal domestication.Describe this contrast and its possible consequences in the diverging pattern of history on both sides of the Atlantic.

Which of the following statements about sheep is true?

In the Middle East,as subsistence economies became more specialized and more dependent on domesticated species,population centers began to emerge that had temples,writing,and canals for irrigating fields.

With a more reliable food source,the early food producers were considerably healthier than the hunter-gatherers.

Food production is more labor intensive than foraging.

China was host to three different centers of domestication: one in the north,one in the south,and one on the eastern coast.