Let me note that what I'm saying from now on is based on (the little)
that I've read and is merely an educated guess on my part. I'm no
anthropologist so everyone please correct me if I make a false
statement.


Jabriol@excite.com (JaBrIoL) wrote in message

mvillanu@hotmail.com (mvillanu) wrote in message

"jabriol" <jabriol@bluegender.org> wrote in message

<snip>

There are many theories. Some talk about climate change (Ice Age
being one of them) reducing available resources, forcing humans to
figure out ways to gather more and more, eventually requiring him to
artificially propagate plants.

why humans and no other species?

Because by that time Homo Sapiens (and probably the whole genus of
Homo) has evolved enough intelligence that was so far ahead of every
other animal. No other animal started agriculture because they had
other adaptations that allowed them to cope. Humans on the other hand
had only his intelligence to help him survive. The result of that is
agriculture.

squiriels gather for winter.. are they smarter than the rat?

I don't know. It's hard to quantify intelligence among animals,
though we know that there are varying levels of it among them.

Anyway, squirrels store nuts to give them a food source during winter.
Other animals simply migrate. Others hibernate. A squirrel storing
nuts is an adaptation to its environment.

Humans developing agriculture is an adaptation too. Except it's a
cultural adaptation instead of a biological one. The biological
adaptation was intelligence. Because his brain chemistry gave him
such superior intelligence, his species did not have to rely on
biological changes (through evolution) to cope with his environment
anymore. Instead his intelligence gave him the ability to change his
environment to suit him.

Now you're probably going to ask how man became so intelligent. To
that I have some knowledge, but I'm sure many anthropologists can
answer better than I can. From my limited understanding, it was the
result of a chain of events that let primates have bigger brains.

Then you'd probably ask why only primates got the bigger brains and
not other animals. It's good you would ask these things because this
is exactly what science does. I can't give an answer, and one I would
give would be a fairly uneducated guess so I'll leave it to more
knowledgeable posters to explain.

As for rats I don't know what rats do during winter. Hibernate
perhaps? Either way that is what works for a rat. Storing nuts is
what works for a squirrel. Migrating is what works for geese.
Developing technology is what works for humans.

Another one talks about people dropping seeds on his way back to camp
after gathering. Next season he returns to that camping spot
(hunter-gatherers settle at one place for a few weeks and eat the food
around them up to certain radius, and once that's exhausted, they move
to another camping spot) and sees that the plants grew where he
must've dropped seeds.

if humans were nomadic, how did they determine to remain in one place
for a determine period of time?

Because that is the nature of hunting & gathering.

Hunter-gatherer tribes do not wander around randomly. They move from
campsite to campsite and they stay at a campsite for as long as there
is food there for them to gather.

Once the food starts running low
they pack up and move to a "fresh" campsite and hunt-gather there
until the food runs out. Then they move again.

Naturally, after enough times of doing this, they figured out the best
spots to camp.

These are parts of the land that have the biggest
concentration of food. They would move between these places during
the course of the year. By the time they come back to a campsite they
had used the previous year, the plants have grown new
fruit/food/whatever for them to eat and they repeat the process.

Another one talks about an increase in survivability due to better
weapons, making hunting-gathering tribes to be larger and larger,
reducing the ability of their surroundings to support their groups.

so the mind evolved, even thought they had the same brain chemistry to
function
no different from today.. than it was 160,000 yrs ago?

This part is where we reach the limits of mind knowledge, so my answer
will not be very detailed.

Anyway, my point was that man managed to increase his survivability to
the point where his population could grow despite disease, saber-tooth
cats, and infant mortality (and whatever else killed him). As to the
cause of this, I'll leave the anthropologists in this NG to answer.

But to propose an answer, my guess would be it's because of his
intelligence. It gave man the ability to depend on cultural evolution
as a means of survival instead of biological evolution.

I like this one because it makes some sense (at least to me). Man got
better at defending himself, and taking care of himself, so that
babies and kids had a better chance of surviving, and the adults had a
better chance of living longer. Pretty soon the tribe gets big and
splits up. Eventually the land gets too saturated, and
hunting-gathering doesn't adequately feed people anymore. Combine
that with what I said two paragraphs previous and you suddenly found a
way to increase your food supply.

how did he get better?

Again it's good that you're asking these things. I'll note that
whenever a scientist makes a claim (like I did) he gets bombarded with
questions from other scientists (like what you asked). It's part of
the scientific method.

As to why he got better at defending himself? I honestly can't tell
you because my knowledge has run out. But if I had to guess, again it
was because of his intelligence. The intelligence resulted from
biological evolution. The intelligence gave him cultural evolution
which works much faster than biological evolution. Which is why
technology progresses exponentially.

Keep in mind that agriculture did not rise around the world at the
same time. The first ones to do it were, naturally, those people

lived in very fertile parts of the world, such as between the

and Euphrates rivers and the Yellow river in China.

true ... yet only a few milenias.. why it took so long for man to

potatoe?

Because they had no need to, until forces like climate change and
overpopulation forced him to find other ways of securing himself a
food supply.

human over population?

Yes. The population of an area of land depends on the land's ability
to sustain that population. If the population exceeds this ability
they die off. It then stabilizes to a nominal level.

Fortunately for humans, they managed to find a way to raise the
"population capacity" of an area of land. One of the ways to do this
was agriculture.

What happens now is that instead of hunting-gathering making up 80% of
his food source, the plants he has been cultivating does.
Hunting-gathering winds up being 20% of his food source. By now those
plants need special care since they most likely can't survive on their
own. This forces him stay in one place (plants don't change camping
spots very well).

And how long did it take this for him to figure out?

Again that's the limit of my knowledge. But my guess would be it was
some sort of progression over many generations. A really rough guess
would be that is was a natural result of nomadic agriculture. It
probably occurred during the millennia before 9000 years ago. My
guess would be a few thousand years of this type of steady progression
toward plant cultivation.


[snip]

One example seems to be Native Americans who lived
in what is now California. Those people subsisted on gathering

processing acorns. There is evidence that while they didn't plant

trees in a formal fashion, they encouraged the trees to dominate

landscape by burning/cutting down non-acorn producing trees. This
allowed acorn producing trees to spread, which enhances the

of their food source.

how long ago?

As recent 600-700 years ago before the Spaniards colonized the place.

Given that North America was settled much much later than the other
the land masses, it's not a surprise that Native Americans were
"behind" in their development of agriculture (and therefore
civilization) compared to the rest of the world.

this is still recent..

Yes but there's little reason to doubt that pre-agriculture man did
the same thing.