An Edible History of Humanity Read Online Free PDF Page A

farming, since such food makes up only a tiny fraction of
     their diet. But the deliberate manipulation of the ecosystem means they are not exclusively hunter-gatherers either.
    The adoption of farming seems to have happened as people moved gradually along the spectrum from being pure hunter-gatherers
     to being ever more reliant on (and eventually dependent on) farmed food. Theories to explain this shift abound, but there
     was probably no single cause. Instead a combination of factors were probably involved, each of which played a greater or lesser
     role in each of the homelands where agriculture arose independently.
    One of the most important factors appears to have been climate change. Studies of the ancient climate, based on the analysis
     of ice cores, deep-sea cores, and pollen profiles, have found that between 18,000 B.C. and 9500 B.C. the climate was cold,
     dry, and highly variable, so any attempt to cultivate or domesticate plants would have failed. Intriguingly there is evidence
     of at least one such attempt, at a site called Abu Hureyra in northern Syria. Around 10,700 B.C. the inhabitants of this site
     seem to have begun to domesticate rye. But their attempt fell victim to a sudden cold phase known as the Younger Dryas, which
     began around 10,700 B.C. and lasted for around 1,200 years. Then, around 9500 B.C., the climate suddenly became warmer, wetter,
     and more stable. This provided a necessary but not sufficient condition for agriculture. After all, if the newly stable climate
     was the only factor that prompted the adoption of farming, then people would have adopted it simultaneously all around the
     world. But they did not, so there must have been other forces at work as well.
    One such factor was greater sedentism, as hunter-gatherers in some parts of the world became less mobile and began to spend
     most of the year at a single camp, or even took up permanent residence. There are many examples of sedentary village communities
     that predate the adoption of farming, such as those of the Natufian culture of the Near East, which flourished in the millennium
     before the Younger Dryas, and others on the north coast of Peru and in North America’s Pacific Northwest. In each case these
     settlements were made possible by abundant local wild food, often in the form of fish or shellfish. Normally, hunter-gatherers
     move their camps to prevent the food supply in a particular area from becoming depleted, or to take advantage of the seasonal
     availability of different foods. But there is no need to move around if you settle next to a river and the food comes to you.
     Improvements in food-gathering techniques in the late Stone Age, such as better arrows, nets, and fish hooks, may also have
     promoted sedentism. Once a hunter-gatherer band could extract more food (such as fish, small rodents, or shellfish) from its
     surroundings, it did not need to move around so much.
    Sedentism does not always lead to farming, and some settled hunter-gatherer groups survived into modern times without ever
     adopting agriculture. But sedentism does make the switch to farming more likely. Settled hunter-gatherers who gather wild
     grains, for example, might be inclined to start planting a few seeds in order to maintain the supply. Planting might also
     have provided a form of insurance against variations in the supply of other foods. And since grains are processed using grinding
     stones which are inconvenient for hunter-gatherers to carry from one camp to another, greater sedentism would have made grains
     a more attractive foodstuff. The fact that grains are energy-rich, and could be dried and stored for long periods, also counted
     in their favor. They were not a terribly exciting foodstuff, but they could be relied upon in extremis.
    It is not hard to imagine how sedentary hunter-gatherers might have started to rely more heavily on cereal grains as part
     of their diet. What was initially a relatively unimportant food