DBQ Sources: Farming vs. Foraging
WORLD HISTORY PROJECTORIGINS / LESSON 2.5ACTIVITYDBQ SOURCES: FARMING VS. FORAGINGUnless otherwise noted, this work is licensed under CC BY 4.0. Credit: “DBQ Sources: Farming vs. Foraging”, OER Project, https://www.oerproject.com/1PurposeUse a variety of primary and secondary sources to deepen your understanding of the benefits and disadvantages of farming versus foraging.ProcessAnalyze the following sources. If you are using these sources to respond to an essay prompt, you should underlineor highlightany evidence that will support your claim. You can also use theQuick Sourcing Tool.Document 1The following passage is from a report about a recent study published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour authored by a team of anthropologists. For two years, a team [of researchers] ... lived with the Agta, a population of small scale hunter-gatherers from the northern Philippines who are increasingly engaging in agriculture. ...While some Agta communities engage exclusively in hunting and gathering, others divide their time between foraging and rice farming.The study ... reveals that increased engagement in farming and other non-foraging work resulted in the Agta working harder and losing leisure time. On average, the team estimate that Agta engaged primarily in farming work around 30 hours per week while foragers only do so for 20 hours. They found that this dramatic difference was largely due to women being drawn away from domestic activities to working in the fields. ...There was also a sexual division of labor with women spending less time working out-of-camp, and more time engaged in domestic chores and childcare than men, even though men and women had a similar amount of leisure time. However, the study found that the adoption of farming had a disproportionate impact on women’s lives. ...Source: “Farmers have less leisure time than hunter-gatherers, study suggests.” University of Cambridge Research, May 21, 2019. https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/farmers-have-less-leisure-time-than-hunter-gatherers-study-suggests
WORLD HISTORY PROJECT ORIGINS / LESSON 2.5ACTIVITYDBQ SOURCES: FARMING VS. FORAGING2Full study reference: Dyble, M., Thorley, J., Page, A.E., Smith, D., and Migliano, A.B. “Engagement in agricultural work is associated with reduced leisure time among Agta hunter-gatherers.” Nature Human Behaviour 3, no. 8 (2019): 792–96.
WORLD HISTORY PROJECT ORIGINS / LESSON 2.5ACTIVITYDBQ SOURCES: FARMING VS. FORAGING3Document2The below passage is an excerpt of an article written by the anthropologist Marshall Sahlins on foraging societies in Australia and Africa. This means each adult worker, worked about two and a half days weekly ... and still had 3 to 5 days available for other activities. ... [Anthropologist Richard] Lee writes, “the majority of the people’s time (four to five days weekly) is spent in other pursuits, such as resting in camp or visiting other camps:” ...In Africa ... the Hazda interestingly reject the neolithic revolution in order to keep their leisure. Surrounded by cultivators, they have until recently refused to take up agriculture themselves, “mainly on the grounds it would involve too much hard work.” They are like the Bushman, who respond to the neolithic question with another: “Why should we plant, when there are so many mongomongo nuts in the world?” ...Source: Sahlins, Marshall. “Hunter-gatherers: insights from a golden affluent age.” Pacific Ecologist 18 (Winter 2009). Originally published in Sahlins, Marshall. “Notes on the Original Affluent Society.” In Man and the Hunter, edited by R.B. Lee and I. DeVore, 85–9. New York: Aldine Publishing Company, 1968.
WORLD HISTORY PROJECT ORIGINS / LESSON 2.5ACTIVITYDBQ SOURCES: FARMING VS. FORAGING4Document3Below is an excerpt from historian Kevin Reilly’s book The West and the World: A History of Civilization: From the Ancient World to 1700, where he describes “civilized life” after farming.Civilized life is secure life. ... [it] gives the feeling of permanence. It offers regularity, stability, order, even routine. Plans can be made. Expectations can be realized. People can be expected to act predictably, according to the rules.The first cities ... provided far greater variety: More races and ethnic groups were speaking more languages, engaged in more occupations, and living a greater variety of lifestyles. ...Security plus variety equals creativity ... the possibility of a more creative, expressive life was available in the protected, semipermanent city enclosures that drew, like magnets, foreign traders and diplomats, new ideas about gods and nature, strange foods and customs, and the magicians, ministers, and mercenaries of the king’s court.Source: Reilly, Kevin. The West and the World: A History of Civilization: From the Ancient World to 1700. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 1997.
WORLD HISTORY PROJECT ORIGINS / LESSON 2.5ACTIVITYDBQ SOURCES: FARMING VS. FORAGING5Document4The following passage is taken from an interview of political scientist James Scott by the writer Sean Illing. [The] standard narrative is that once we had domesticated plants, then we immediately shifted to an agricultural society so that we could stay in the same place. People also assume that before the agricultural revolution, humans had to wander around as foragers and hunter-gatherers.But that’s not quite right. Four thousand years passed between the first firm evidence of domesticated plants, cereals, and the beginning of truly agrarian communities that are living largely by agriculture. ...... staying in one place, which is what civilization more or less forced us to do, wasn’t all that healthy for us, and our human ancestors resisted [it] strongly for a very long time. ...... once we had sedentary agriculture, we then had investment in land and therefore property that could be taxed. We then had the basis for inherited property and thus the basis for passing wealth from one generation to another.... it led to these embedded inequalities that were enforced by the state protection of property. This wasn’t true for hunter and gatherer societies, which regarded all property as common property to which everyone in the tribe had equal access. So the earlyagricultural societies created the basis for systematic class distinctions that could be [passed down] between generations, and that’s how you get the kinds of massive hierarchies and inequalities we see today.Source: Illing, Sean and James Scott. “Why a Leading Political Theorist Thinks Civilization is Overrated.” Vox, November 22, 2017. https://www.vox.com/conversations/2017/11/22/16649038/civilization-progress-humanity-history-technology.
WORLD HISTORY PROJECT ORIGINS / LESSON 2.5ACTIVITYDBQ SOURCES: FARMING VS. FORAGING6Document5The following is from an essay by economist Brad deLong, where he debates whether farming was beneficial or a mistake. The invention of agriculture and the domestication of animals provide an enormous technological boost to humanity both in terms of the number of calories that can be harvested by an hour of work ...Sowhat goes wrong with quality of life among agriculturalists? ... for agriculturalists—without the hazards to adults of travel and hunting, and without the hazards a mobile lifestyle imposes on the very young—that standard of living is a lot lower than amonghunter-gatherers. Lifespan looks about the same looking across hunter-gatherers and agriculturalists. Biomedical and fitness indicators are much, much higher for hunter-gatherers.Whether this is a “disaster” or not depends on the answer to ... whether it is better to have a few people who live very well or a lot of people who live very poorly. ... only the density of population that comes with agriculture can generate enough human brains thinking to allow us to ... create a truly human world in the long run.... I cannot judge whether there was either a positive or a negative change across the boundary of the Neolithic Revolution. More inequality and domination, certainly. But you also have many more interactions between humans ... It is not at all clear to me that the hunter-gatherer epoch had less murder, rape, kidnapping and enslavement of women, and so forth than did the agricultural epoch.The hunter-gatherer age was not a kumbaya-singing age. Where, after all, are the Neanderthals today?Source: deLong, Brad. “Agriculture is the Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race?: Today’s Economic History.” Equitable Growth (blog). June 6, 2016. https://equitablegrowth.org/agriculture-the-worst-mistake-in-the-history-of-the-human-race-todays-economic-history/.
WORLD HISTORY PROJECT ORIGINS / LESSON 2.5ACTIVITYDBQ SOURCES: FARMING VS. FORAGING7Document 6The following is an excerpt from the historian Yuval Noah Harari’s book Sapiens, where he discusses the beginnings of grain farming. Think for a moment about the Agricultural Revolution from the viewpoint of wheat. Ten thousand years ago wheat was just a wild grass ... Suddenly, within just a few short millennia, it was growing all over the world. ...Wheat did it by manipulating Homo sapiens to its advantage. This ape had been living a fairly comfortable life hunting and gathering until about 10,000 years ago, but then began to invest more and more effort in cultivating wheat. Within a couple of millennia, humans in many parts of the world were doing little from dawn to dusk other than taking care of wheat plants. It wasn’t easy. Wheat demanded a lot of them. Wheat didn’t like rocks and pebbles, so Sapiens broke their backs clearing fields. Wheat didn’tlike sharing its space, water, and nutrients with other plants, so men and women labored long days weeding under the scorching sun. ... Wheat was thirsty, so humans lugged water from springs and streams to water it. Its hunger even impelled Sapiens to collect animal feces to nourish the ground in which wheat grew.The body of Homo sapiens had not evolved for such tasks. ... Human spines, knees, necks, and arches paid the price. Studies of ancient skeletons indicate that the transition to agriculture brought about a plethora of ailments, such as slipped disks, arthritis, and hernias. Moreover, the new agricultural tasks demanded so much time that people were forced to settle permanently next to their wheat fields. This completely changed their way of life. We did not domesticate wheat. It domesticated us. ...Source: Harari, Yuval Noah. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. Harper Collins, 2015.