HUMANS TRY TO CONTROL NATURE

TERMS

• Nomad: a member of a group that has no permanent home, wondering from place to place for food.
• Hunter gatherer: A member of a nomadic group whose food supply depends on hunting and edible plants.
• Neolithic revolution: major revolution where humans began to farm for food.
• Slash and burn farming: A method in which people cleared fields for farming by cutting and burning trees and grasses.
• Domestication: the taming of animals for use such as food or tranportation.

NOMADS

• Nomads were men and women of the stone age.
• Moved with the food supply, such as packs of animals or grown food.
• The men hunted and the women gathered fruits and plants.

TOOLS AND ART

• Nomadic people used stone, bone and wood to create more than 100 different tools.
• They created spears and other weapons to help easily hunt.
• The Nomadic people also had artistic ability and jewelry, sculptures and cave drawings were unearthed.

THE NEOLITHIC REVOLUTION

• Women began to sprinkle seeds around temporary campsites and found when they came back seasons later, the crops had grown again.
• This launched the Neolithic Revolution (agricultural revolution).
• This was a shift from food-gathering to food-producing.
• Climate change could have also contributed to this.
• Hunters began to switch to farming to feed the rising population.

FARMING

• Slash-and-burn farming was where nomads cut/burn trees or grasses to clear a field.
• The ashes from the burning of the plants fertilizes the ground for growing.

THE ICE MAN

• Found in 1991 by two German hikers.
• Mummified body of a prehistoric traveler (perserved for 5,000 years).
• He was found with a tool kit with a longbow, flint dagger, a medicice bag and various other tools.
• He was told to have died from an arrow wound.

DOMESTICATION OF ANIMALS

• They tamed horses, dogs, goats, and pigs.
• They learned to slaughter them by driving them into rocky ravines.
• They took this driving technique and began to heard them into enclosures.
• Domestication allowed farmers to keep the animals as a constant source of food and gradually tame them.

ZAGROS MOUNTAINS

• Birthplace of agriculture.
• Wild wheat and barley grew in abundance. Wild goats, pigs, sheep, and horses roamed.

JARMO AND FERTILE RIVER VALLEYS

• Archaelogical dig. Was a agricultural settlement 9,000 years ago.
• Jarmo marked a beginning of a new era and laid the foundation of modern life.
• Many fertile river valleys began to be used for farming in multipe countries.

CATAL HUYUK (FORKED MOUND)

• Agricultural village discovered in 1958.
• It's peak was about 8,000 years ago.
• Located on fertile plain in south-central Turkey, near a twin-coned volcano (32 acres).
• Home from 5,000 to 6,000 people with 1,000 dwellings.

CATAL HUYUK (CONTINUED)

• They had a large amount of wheat, sheep, and cattle.
• These food source supported the workers such as potters and weavers.
• Obsidian was a large export of theirs (making it into jewelry and various other items).
• They put their faith into a goddess who they believed controlled their wheat.
• As flourishing as it was, it was prone to natural disasters, disease and looting.

TAKEAWAY

• In ancient times, everyone knew how to farm. People had to farm to survive.
• In modern times, farming has become a small apart of our lives.
• In 1900, 41 percent of the US workforce was employed in agriculture, in 2000 only 1.9 pervent.
• The next figure shows how farming has dropped dramatically in the last 50 years.

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