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> "despite practicing animal husbandry—a cultural innovation that originated outside Africa" Animal husbandry was a response to unproductive hunting. And since
by begueradj 1y ago
> "despite practicing animal husbandry—a cultural innovation that originated outside Africa"
Animal husbandry was a response to unproductive hunting. And since desertification - hence unproductive hunting- started long time ago in Africa, it makes sense that animal husbandry started there too before it appeared elsewhere.
- dani__german 1y agoit is one logical pathway, but another is to simply move to a new area, rather than develop animal husbandry. Which one seems more likely?
- HelloNurse 1y agoBoth at the same time. If you repeatedly migrate in order to maintain a foraging and hunting lifestyle, you are sufficiently aware of the undependability of foraging and hunting to make large R&D investments in experimental methods of agriculture and animal husbandry.
- psunavy03 1y agoDepends on how many science points and settlers you have, and where you are on the rest of the tech tree.
- detourdog 1y agoI think the development cordage(rope) and woodworking techniques would have a heavy influence on slowing down, noticing the surrounding abundance. Once a location becomes favorable more substantial and long lasting structures could be made. My question is what was the divide that kept these groups at 50kyo. Something kept them apart. I hope they get samples from different beings to analyze.
- mannyv 1y ago"He majored in animal husbandry, until they caught him at it one day." - tom lehrer.
- Tuna-Fish 1y agoAnimal husbandry did not start in Africa, though. It started in the fertile crescent and spread into Africa. This is very well attested in archaeological finds, and in the fact that the relevant animals were domesticated first there. The surprising news is that the spread of animal husbandry didn't seem to accompany the spread of human genes -- the subsistence strategy was adopted by learning, not by people moving. I don't think this is very shocking because the same thing seems to have happened elsewhere. While agriculture mostly spread by people moving, the culture that developed into all the pastoral cultures of the Eurasian steppe seem to have been hunter-gatherers living in close proximity to farmers.
- MichaelZuo 1y agoBut how does that prove there was no animal husbandry in Africa in the prior hundreds of thousands of years?
- jjk7 1y agoBecause there's no evidence of it until after it was developed outside of Africa? You don't have to prove something that doesn't exist. Find the evidence, and prove it does.
- Tuna-Fish 1y agoAnimal husbandry leaves behind a lot of evidence, starting from different distributions of animal ages and sexes found in bones in refuse pits, to genetic evidence of artificial selection. This evidence is found everywhere. But it's dateable, and you can find the oldest instances of it in the fertile crescent.
- MichaelZuo 1y agoDo you really need me to remind you that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence?
- throwee2000 1y ago