Lesson Purpose
All things need energy to survive. For a long time, humans met their energy needs almost exclusively by eating food they foraged in their local environment. In other words, humans were completely dependent on the plants and animals that nature provided. The invention of farming about 12,000 years ago gave humans access to vast new food and energy resources, which helped to dramatically transform the way humans lived. Among other things, farming made possible dramatic population growth, and it allowed humans to settle in larger, denser communities than a foraging lifestyle could support. These larger and denser communities eventually led to the development of cities and civilisations, which accelerated collective learning and innovation.
The outcomes of this lesson are: 1.) To define agriculture and describe where it emerged; 2.) To understand the similarities and differences between the lifestyles of hunter-gatherers and farmers.
The outcomes of this lesson are: 1.) To define agriculture and describe where it emerged; 2.) To understand the similarities and differences between the lifestyles of hunter-gatherers and farmers.
Activity 1 - This Threshold Today
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Activity Objectives
This Threshold Today activities asks you to make connections between today’s world and the events of each threshold. In Threshold 7, it is important and interesting for you to know that even though agriculture is thousands of years old, there are still many unanswered questions about how and why people began to farm. This activity will allow you to investigate new research on agriculture including how scientists and historians are using techniques like DNA testing to determine plant and animal origins. Activity Tasks
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Activity 2 - Threshold 7: Agriculture
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The development of agriculture gave humans greater access to more reliable food sources by harnessing more of the Sun’s energy. As a result, population grew dramatically, and people began to settle down to form larger, denser communities like cities and agrarian civilizations. More people began to share ideas with each other, which meant rates of innovation and collective learning increased.
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Activity Objectives
In this video, David Christian provides an introduction to agriculture, which is Threshold 7. Christian’s focus is on the ingredients and Goldilocks Conditions that made agriculture possible. In order for you to understand the importance of agriculture, you must first learn the conditions that made it possible for people to begin farming and domesticating animals. Activity Tasks
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Activity 3 - Why was Agriculture so Important?
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Activity Objectives
Although humans are not the only animals to practice agriculture, they are the only species to exploit this technology to the extent that they do. Agriculture provides humans with access to the huge amounts of the energy stored in plants as a result of the process of photosynthesis. It is important for you to understand how agriculture made population growth possible and how this led to an increase in innovation and collective learning. Activity Tasks
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At the end of the last ice age, competition for limited resources and the existence of warmer, wetter climates were conditions present in many parts of the world. Foragers had used migration to relieve population and resource pressures in the past, but this was no longer an option once humans had migrated to all corners of the world. Thus, humans were forced to innovate in order to survive, with agriculture becoming the solution. Farming originally developed in the Fertile Crescent, but humans in China, Papua New Guinea, West Africa, Mesoamerica, and the Andes also began to domesticate plants and animals in order to gain access to more energy and food.
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Activity 4 - The Driving Question Notebook
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Activity Objectives
At this point, you should be all too familiar with the purpose of the DQ Notebook. Remember to keep focused on the important ideas in the unit. Activity Tasks
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Activity 5 - Jacqueline Howard: History of Domestic Animals
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Activity Objectives
This video invites you to think about pets in a new way. More than just companions for early humans, dogs might have played a key role in the development of farming. Activity Tasks
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Humans first domesticated dogs prior to the development of agriculture 10,000 years ago. Early dogs developed into the breeds that we see now through the process of artificial selection. After dogs, we went on to domesticate cows, sheep, goats, camels, horses, oxen, and other livestock. These beasts of burden gave an advantage to populations in Afro-Eurasia because of their usefulness in farming and trade. Domesticated animals in the Americas included llamas, turkeys, and guinea pigs, none of which could be used as working animals.
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Activity 6 - "Collective Learning Part 2"
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Activity Objectives
Collective learning is a defining characteristic that distinguishes humans from other animals and is a key concept in the Big History units that focus on humans. In this article, David Christian explains the process of collective learning in more detail. It is essential for you to understand how and why collective learning increased as a result of agriculture. Activity Tasks
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Activity 7 - Biography of a Crop
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Activity Objectives
This activity will provide you with the opportunity to formalize and deepen your understanding of what it means to “domesticate” a plant by writing a biography of an important crop. Your goal will be to research a series of questions about the crop, write up that research, and then share it with your classmates. Activity Tasks
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Activity 8 - "What's for Dinner Tonight? Evidence of Early Agriculture: The First Farmers"
There are many types of historians and scientists that help us learn about the past. In particular, archaeologists and scientists like archaeobotanists can examine artifacts to find evidence that support and expand our understanding of early societies and civilizations. Scientific evidence of early agriculture has taught us that early farmers were intelligent, they experimented with different kinds of plants, they invented new technologies and tools to increase their production, and their knowledge was passed along as part of collective learning.
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Activity Objectives
This reading will help you understand how historians can draw conclusions about early periods in history without a lot of evidence from written records. In particular, this article focuses on our discoveries about early agriculture, and shows how influential people such as archaeologists are in helping us understand history. This further illustrates the idea that history is not only done by historians, but by scholars from multiple disciplines. Providing concrete examples of how this is done should give you a better understanding of early agriculture, how our understanding of early agriculture has changed over time, as well as an increased understanding of the kinds of sources of evidence that are used to understand early farming. Activity Tasks
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Activity 9 - Little Big History Biography
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Activity Objectives
In this activity, you will answer a general set of questions about your Little Big History topic. This activity will help you become more familiar with your LBH topic, which will enable you to formulate better research questions when you start your final project. Activity Tasks
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Challenge Yourself! - Optional Activities
1. Fifty million years before modern humans, some species of ants were already farming. Leafcutter ants use leaves and other organic material to grow fungus in their nests, which they then eat.
2. Different ways of gathering calories from the land can affect human population growth.
3. Consider the power of modern social networks and how they map real human relationships.
4. The dawn of agriculture? Not so good for us. The height and health of people declined around the world 10,000 years ago, regardless of location and type of crops.
2. Different ways of gathering calories from the land can affect human population growth.
3. Consider the power of modern social networks and how they map real human relationships.
4. The dawn of agriculture? Not so good for us. The height and health of people declined around the world 10,000 years ago, regardless of location and type of crops.