1 (First Farmers), Sections: Breakthroughs to Agriculture to end of Chapter

       What I found interesting in this chapter was how in the book it said "Among the most revolutionary aspects of the agriculture was a new relationship between humankind and other things".  Men and Women changed nature based off of their actions. Its funny when you think about it, that we change nature from our actions. Like we have control of the way nature reacts towards our actions. Farms transformed corn from a plant with a cob of an inch or so to measuring about six inches by 1500. Even later they expanded and stamper the landscape with a human imprint in the forms of fields with boundaries, terraced hillside, irrigation ditches, and canals. The animals started to transform because they were selected to breed to produce sheep that grew more wool. cows that gave more milk, and chickens that laid more eggs then their wild counterparts. I thought that this was very interning to read about because how smart these people were to think of doing this to help them advance in living. They called this "domestication" the damming, and the changing, of nature for the benefit of humankind but it created a new kind of mutual dependence. I thought it was crazy to read how plants and animals couldn't survive without any human actions to protect them to reproduce successfully. Back then gathering and hunting was a popular thing to do to provide yourself with food and such. It continued to the modern industrial societies, even continued as a sport. which is pretty funny because you would consider that a sport now a days. Gathering berries and mushrooms persists as an enjoyable pastime, and fishing for both profit and pleasure remains and widespread activity. Original human style of living resonates still, even in the twenty-first century.

Intensification means getting more for less. Which is kinda how things work now a days when it comes to products and such. More food and resource far more from a much smaller area of land than was possible with a gathering and hunting technology. Which meant more food more people. When growing the population it require an even more intensive exploration of the environment and so was launched the continuing human effort to "subdue the earth" and to "have dominion over it" as the biblical story in genesis recored God's command to Adam and Eve. Its crazy how they compare it to God and Adam and Eve because it sounds like their making it seem that God put them on earth to take over the earth instead of to create mankind.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

On Chapter 9 (The Worlds of Islam)

Chapter 12.

Chapter 11 (Pastoral Peoples on the Global Stage)