Agriculture/Food Getting

10,000 years ago everyone that lived on earth got their food by hunting animals and gathering nuts, berries and roots. These hunter/gatherer societies were probably small bands of people of no more than 50 or so. Keeping the numbers small ensured there would be plenty of food for everyone. There is approximately a quarter of a million people still living this lifestyle. They are located in the Arctic and the interior of Africa, Australia and South America.

                                                     Kalihari Bushman (Hunter/Gatherer's)

Some sources state that agriculture started 10,000 years ago with the domestication of wheat in what is now northern Iraq. Other sources state that the domestication of other grains were probably started in different areas of the world and diffused from these locations. Domestication of seeds ensured they could be planted and harvested in the same place. Wild versions of grains had exploding seed pods and the seeds would scatter everywhere making is difficult to find and replant.

                                                                Domesticated Wheat

Food getting tells us a lot about a culture. For instance in the United States it is not necessary for us to be hunter/gatherers because food is a big industry here. There are farms big enough to supply the country with meat, fruits and vegetables. While some people still hunt for food and still grow their own crops for their personal consumption that is a choice not necessarily a necessity. Where I as an Anthropology student find real interesting information is in the hunter/gatherer societies that still exist. There is much to learn from these people.

We find things in this type of lifestyle completely different from the way we live. For instance, we find that these numbers were kept low by a number of factors. First the life expectancy is only about 30 years of age. They have a high infant mortality rate. Nursing an infant lowers the ability to conceive when the diet is marginal, causing increased birth spacing. Some of the qualities of this lifestyle are.. They are nomadic, moving from place to place searching for food and never settling one place for an extended period of time. A big one that most societies could take a lesson from, as they are nomadic they are not materialistic. The live in shelters not houses so there is no place to put non essential items, plus they would not want to lug a bunch of knickknacks around with them. They have a simple sexual division of labor. The men do the hunting and the women and children to the gathering. They are egalitarian, meaning that everyone in the group has a say in what happens. There is no one person in charge of the group. There is no one person in charge of the group. Another issue that is not so glamorous is that these people really have no territory to defend, making them easily bullied out of what little they do have.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Agriculture also has its ugly side firt of all it brought about social stratification, which is the hierarchical arrangement of individuals into divisions of power and wealth within a society.  There are other not so nice issues that were brought about by agriculture.

In the May 1987 issue of Discover magazine, Jared Diamond, a physiology professor at UCLA Medical School, wrote an article entitled “The worst mistake in the history of the human race.” In it he argues that once formal agriculture was established the health of human beings began to decline. He mentions that first of all the Kalihari Bushmen only spend about 12-19 hours a week obtaining food. Leaving a lot of time for leisure activities.  He argues that h/g societies have a more nutritional diet from the various things they eat.  Paleopathologists have been able to determine from skeletal remains in Greece and Turkey that the average height at the (end of the ice age was 5'9" for men and 5'5" for women.  With the adoption of agriculture, height crashed and by 3000 B.C. the averages were 5'3" for men and 5' for women) 65.  He also lists starvation, and epidemic diseases as curses that were brought about because of agriculture.

I found this section on agriculture to be pretty interesting coupled with the information that I received in anthropology class.  Learning about agriculture form the human geography perspective will help immensly when working on ethnographies in just about every culture.  The history of agriculture will also peek up during archaeological work when digging in preshistoric garbage dumps.

References:
http://www.bing.com/search?q=social+stratification&src=IE-Address
Contemporary Human Geography, Rubenstein, James M., Prentice Hall, Pearson, 2010
Dr. E. Steve Cassells, Laramie County Community College, Cheyenne, WY, Cultural Anthroplogy Class
Discover Magazine, May 1987, Jared Diamond, pp 64-66

Religion

Human Geography lists the world’s religions, their places of origin, along with their distribution and diffusion around the globe. It begins simply with their origin and explaining that ethnic religions are generally localized religions appealing to a group of people, Hinduism for example.

Universalizing religions on the other hand are those that spread out globally and are appealing to a majority of people such as Christianity, Islam and Buddhism. These are the major universalizing religions of the world. Christianity and Islam have had a long history of opposition with regard to which is correct and much bloodshed has resulted from this opposition. Universalizing religions are bent on getting their message out and converting those who are not familiar with or oppose their beliefs, to convert.

Each has had great success in amassing huge numbers of followers with Christianity having more than 2 billion adherents in a number of branches, denominations and sects. Christianity is predominantly found in North and South America, Europe and Australia. Islam is the preferred religion of 1.3 billion followers mainly in the Middle East from North Africa to Central Asia. Buddhism has nearly 400 million followers predominantly in China and Southeast Asia.

Anthropology is interested in religion because people act on the basis of their beliefs, and religion includes many strongly held beliefs. When anthropologists look at a culture’s religious beliefs a couple of things must be considered. First it must be understood what religion is. It is found in every culture and includes a belief in some form of the supernatural, includes the worship of a force or forces, and involves faith. Secondly, religion is not empirical because God is not empirical, meaning that it cannot be observed by at least one of the five senses. Anthropology will not try to prove or disprove the reality of any culture’s deity or deities, but rather take a humanistic approach and explain religion based on what is observed, to include why it exists and what its function is.

Some interesting ideas on the origins and functions of religion have been noted by anthropologists and sociologists. The anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski found that religion can be a substitute for science when he observed the Trobriand Islanders using science to navigate the waters and when that failed they turned to their religion or magic to save them. French sociologist Emile Durkheim believed that religion bound people together socially and gave them a sense of belonging. Some other functions of religion are answers to the big questions about the world around us. How did we get here? What is our purpose in life? It also gives comfort in times of distress and also gives us something to look forward to after we die such as rewards in the next world. It also has helped with social control. Take a look at the 10 Commandments for example.

As religion is a very touchy topic, I believe that it is the duty of ethnographic anthropologists to remember that they must look at cultures from a holistic perspective -no judgments- and accurately document what they observe. Any preconceived notions or thoughts about a particular religion should be shed and a clean slate started to ensure that the information they publish is fact and not feeling. There is far too much ignorance in the world when it comes to religious beliefs. I am not only talking about the major Universalizing religions, but those that most believe are not really religions at all, especially the “New Age” religions. Since I have been studying anthropology, this has really weighed heavy on me. I am not a traditional religious person myself. I can see the good in all religions. I also see the bad, which includes intolerance of other religious beliefs. Ignorance not unintelligence is the culprit here. I have seriously considered working on something like this and should I decide later to do some ethnographic work, I would like to focus on this. The website religioustolerance.org lists information on about 40 different religions and is a great resource for anyone interested in learning more about the various religions.

We were all born with free will and it would do the world some good if people could remember that.

References:
Contemporary Human Geography, Rubenstein, James M., Prentice Hall, Pearson, 2010
Dr. E. Steve Cassells, Laramie County Community College, Cheyenne, WY, Cultural Anthroplogy Class
http://www.religioustolerance.org/var_rel.htm

Population

Currently the Earth is home to about 6.8 billion people. If the current levels of Crude Birth Rate and Crude Death Rate remain the same for the next 100 or so years,  the earth would have approximately 24 billion people. That is quite a jump considering 2000 years ago the Earth’s population was about 200 million and 100 years ago it was roughly 1.6 billion. This brings up concern about overpopulation. What needs to be considered when thinking about overpopulation is the carrying capacity of Earth and overconsumption of its inhabitants.

Total Population

The size of each territory shows the relative proportion of the world's population living there.

Carrying capacity is the ability of an environment to sustain life with food, natural resources and a decent habitat in which to live. Overconsumption and I would also like to add waste is pretty self explanatory. Normally if an environment is inhospitable, such as being too wet or too dry, people cannot or will not live there. The ability to start and maintain agriculture, the availability of other food sources and access to natural resources are all ideal areas to live. With 6.8 billion people living in the habitable areas of the earth, this is a concern.

In 1798 British economist and clergyman Thomas Malthus wrote “An Essay on the Principle of Population.” Essentially what Malthus explains is that at the time, the population seemed to be doubling every 25 years (increasing geometrically) but food supply could not keep up as it increases arithmetically. Using England as his example he determined that a century after writing his essay the population would be 112 million but food sources would only provide for 35 million, leaving 77 million people without food (Chapter 2 pg. 7). Some say that this was Malthus’ way of voicing his thought that the lower class reproduced too much and possibly a scare tactic to prevent premarital sex. Whatever the case, his ideas about population outgrowing its means of subsistence did not go unnoticed by the “Father of modern evolution,” Charles Darwin.

Darwin as well as Alfred Wallace, also a theorist of evolution, read Malthus’ essay and both noticed that lack of food supply coupled with a species struggle for existence, concluded that under these conditions favorable variations would survive and unfavorable variations would be destroyed, resulting in a new species. This may also be the time when survival of the fittest was first considered.

Evolution plays a huge part in the study of Biological Anthropology, which is the study of the genetic qualities of humans both modern and prehistoric. It is interesting to note that while Darwin’s book “On the Origin of Species” was not published until after Malthus’s death, he probably would not want his name associated with this theory, given that he was a clergyman. Some Anthropologists believe that overpopulation is happening and that survival of the fittest may be true for humans as it is for other species on earth.

Final thoughts…

It is my opinion from a human standpoint that technological advances will ensure we survive as a species, whether here on earth or populating another planet. Mistreatment, abuse, corruption and war are the human elements for population control. Add disease and natural disaster into the equation and I do not believe we are in any real danger of being overpopulated.

Sources:
http://www.worldmapper.org/display.php?selected=2
http://www.worldometers.info/population/
http://overpopulation.org/
http://www.esp.org/books/malthus/population/malthus.pdf

Introduction

Anthropology is the study of humankind usually taking a historical and comparative approach. Human Geography, according to Contemporary Human Geography, Rubenstein, James M., is the “relevance of geographic concepts to human problems”, (xiii). As an Anthropology major, I decided to take a course in Human Geography simply because I thought the two would go hand in hand. It is my intention with this blog, to demonstrate their relevance to each other by taking a few topics from the book and applying them to what would be useful in any or all of the Anthropological disciplines, Cultural, Linguistic, Biological, and even Archaeology.