{"id":2956,"date":"2016-07-28T11:31:05","date_gmt":"2016-07-28T17:31:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stage.unews.umc.utah.edu\/?p=2956"},"modified":"2016-09-19T14:35:40","modified_gmt":"2016-09-19T20:35:40","slug":"population-boom-preceded-early-farming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stage.unews.umc.utah.edu\/population-boom-preceded-early-farming\/","title":{"rendered":"Population boom preceded early farming"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>University of Utah anthropologists counted the number of carbon-dated artifacts at archaeological sites and concluded that a population boom and scarce food explain why people in eastern North America domesticated plants for the first time on the continent about 5,000 years ago.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDomesticated plants and animals are part of our everyday lives, so much so that we take them for granted,\u201d says <a href=\"https:\/\/faculty.utah.edu\/u0850178-Brian_F_Codding\/research\/index.hml\">Brian Codding<\/a>, senior author of the study published online August 2\u00a0by the British journal <em><a href=\"http:\/\/rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org\/content\/3\/8\/160319\">Royal Society Open Science<\/a>. <\/em>\u201cBut they represent a very unique thing in human history. They allowed for large numbers of people to live in one place. That ultimately set the stage for the emergence of civilization.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Graduate student <a href=\"https:\/\/faculty.utah.edu\/u0937384-ELIC_MICHAEL_WEITZEL\/biography\/index.hml\">Elic Weitzel<\/a>, the study\u2019s first author, adds: \u201cFor most of human history, people lived off wild foods \u2013 whatever they could hunt or gather. It\u2019s only relatively recently that people made this switch to a very different method of acquiring their food. It\u2019s important to understand why that transition happened.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The study dealt not with a full-fledged agricultural economy, but with the earlier step of domestication, when early people in eastern North America first started growing plants they had harvested in the wild, namely, squash, sunflower, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Iva_annua\">marshelder<\/a> and a chenopod named <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Chenopodium_berlandieri\">pitseed goosefoot<\/a>, a pseudocereal grain closely related to quinoa.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_2959\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"width: 301px\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-2959\" src=\"https:\/\/d1bbnjcim4wtri.cloudfront.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/16124001\/CoddingWeitzel4164_crop.jpg\" alt=\"University of Utah anthropologists Brian Codding (left) and Elic Weitzel.\" width=\"301\" height=\"215\" srcset=\"https:\/\/d1bbnjcim4wtri.cloudfront.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/16124001\/CoddingWeitzel4164_crop.jpg 3173w, https:\/\/d1bbnjcim4wtri.cloudfront.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/16124001\/CoddingWeitzel4164_crop.jpg 551w, https:\/\/d1bbnjcim4wtri.cloudfront.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/16124001\/CoddingWeitzel4164_crop.jpg 768w, https:\/\/d1bbnjcim4wtri.cloudfront.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/16124001\/CoddingWeitzel4164_crop.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 301px) 100vw, 301px\" \/><div class=\"caption-bottom\"><p class=\"credit\"><span class=\"pre-text\">PHOTO CREDIT: <\/span>University of Utah<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">University of Utah anthropologists Brian Codding (left) and Elic Weitzel.<\/p><button class=\"outline-light btn-full-width btn-download\"><i class=\"fa fa-download\"><\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/d1bbnjcim4wtri.cloudfront.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/16124001\/CoddingWeitzel4164_crop.jpg\" target=\"_blank\">Download Full-Res Image<\/a><\/button><\/div><\/div>\n<p>Codding, an assistant professor of anthropology, says at least 11 plant domestication events have been identified in world history, starting with wheat about 11,500 years ago in the Middle East. The eastern North American plant domestication event, which began around 5,000 years ago, was the ninth of those 11 events and came after a population boom 6,900 to 5,200 years ago, he adds.<\/p>\n<p>For many years, two competing theories have sought to explain the cause of plant domestication in eastern North America: First, population growth and resulting food scarcity prompted people to grow foods on which they already foraged. Second, a theory called \u201cniche construction\u201d or \u201cecosystem engineering\u201d that basically says intentional experimentation and management during times of plenty \u2013 and not immediate necessity \u2013 led people to manage and manipulate wild plants to increase their food supply.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe argue that human populations significantly increased prior to plant domestication in eastern North America, suggesting that people are driven to domestication when populations outstrip the supply of wild foods,\u201d Weitzel says.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe transition to domesticating food allowed human populations to increase drastically around the world and made our modern way of life possible,\u201d he adds. \u201cPeople start living near the fields. Whenever you\u2019ve got sedentary communities, they start to expand. Villages expand into cities. Once you have that, you have all sorts of social changes. We really don\u2019t see state-level society until domestication occurs.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_2960\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"width: 510px\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-2960\" src=\"https:\/\/d1bbnjcim4wtri.cloudfront.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/16124000\/FinalDomesticationMap.jpg\" alt=\"This map shows the area covered by a new University of Utah study that concludes a population boom and resulting scarcity of wild foods are what caused early people in eastern North America to domesticate wild food plants for the first time on the continent starting about 5,000 year ago. The triangles and names represent archaeological sites previously identified as locations where one or more of the these plants first were domesticated: squash, sunflower, marshelder and pitseed goosefoot, a relative of quinoa. The small circles are sites where radiocarbon-dated artifacts have been found, with a single circle often representing many dated artifacts. The study area includes much of eastern North America inland from the Atlantic and Gulf coasts.\" width=\"510\" height=\"394\" srcset=\"https:\/\/d1bbnjcim4wtri.cloudfront.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/16124000\/FinalDomesticationMap.jpg 6600w, https:\/\/d1bbnjcim4wtri.cloudfront.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/16124000\/FinalDomesticationMap.jpg 510w, https:\/\/d1bbnjcim4wtri.cloudfront.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/16124000\/FinalDomesticationMap.jpg 768w, https:\/\/d1bbnjcim4wtri.cloudfront.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/16124000\/FinalDomesticationMap.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 510px) 100vw, 510px\" \/><div class=\"caption-bottom\"><p class=\"credit\"><span class=\"pre-text\">PHOTO CREDIT: <\/span>Elic Weitzel, University of Utah.<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">This map shows the area covered by a new University of Utah study that concludes a population boom and resulting scarcity of wild foods are what caused early people in eastern North America to domesticate wild food plants for the first time on the continent starting about 5,000 year ago. The triangles and names represent archaeological sites previously identified as locations where one or more of the these plants first were domesticated: squash, sunflower, marshelder and pitseed goosefoot, a relative of quinoa. The small circles are sites where radiocarbon-dated artifacts have been found, with a single circle often representing many dated artifacts. The study area includes much of eastern North America inland from the Atlantic and Gulf coasts.<\/p><button class=\"outline-light btn-full-width btn-download\"><i class=\"fa fa-download\"><\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/d1bbnjcim4wtri.cloudfront.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/16124000\/FinalDomesticationMap.jpg\" target=\"_blank\">Download Full-Res Image<\/a><\/button><\/div><\/div>\n<p><strong>When early North Americans first domesticated crops<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The region of eastern North America covered by the study includes most of Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and Arkansas, and portions of Oklahoma, Kansas, Iowa, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi and Louisiana.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is the region where these plant foods were domesticated from their wild variants,\u201d Weitzel says. \u201cEverywhere else in North America, crops were imported from elsewhere,\u201d particularly Mexico and Central America.<\/p>\n<p>Four indigenous plant species constitute what scientists call the Eastern Agricultural Complex, which people began to domesticate about 5,000 years ago.<\/p>\n<p>Previous research shows specific domestication dates were 5,025 years ago for squash at an archaeological site named Phillips Spring in Missouri, 4,840 years ago for sunflower seeds domesticated at Hayes in Tennessee, 4,400 years ago for marshelder at the Napoleon Hollow site in Illinois, and 3,800 years ago for pitseed goosefoot found in large quantities at Riverton, Illinois, along with squash, sunflower and marshelder.<\/p>\n<p>Three more recent sites also have been found to contain evidence of domestication of all four species: Kentucky\u2019s Cloudsplitter and Newt Kindigenash rockshelters, dated to 3,700 and 3,640 years ago, respectively, and the 3,400-year-old Marble Bluff site in Arkansas.<\/p>\n<p>Sunflower and squash \u2013 including acorn and green and yellow summer squashes \u2013 remain important crops today, while marshelder and pitseed goosefoot are not (although the related quinoa is popular).<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Deducing population swings from radiocarbon dates<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s really difficult to arrive at measures of prehistoric populations. So archaeologists have struggled for a long time coming up with some way of quantifying population levels when we don\u2019t have historical records,\u201d Weitzel says.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPeople have looked at the number of sites through time, the number of artifacts through time and some of the best work has looked at the effects of population growth,\u201d such as in the switch from a diet of tortoises to rabbits as population grew in the eastern Mediterranean during the past 50,000 years, he adds.<\/p>\n<p>Codding says that in the past decade, archaeologists have expanded the use of radiocarbon-dates for artifacts to reconstruct prehistoric population histories. Weitzel says radiocarbon dates in the new study came from artifacts such as charcoal, nutshells and animal bones \u2013 all recorded in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.canadianarchaeology.ca\/\">a database<\/a> maintained by Canadian scientists.<\/p>\n<p>The University of Utah anthropologists used these \u201csummed radiocarbon dates\u201d for 3,750 dated artifacts from eastern North America during the past 15,000 years.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe assumption is that if you had more people, they left more stuff around that could be dated,\u201d Weitzel says. \u201cSo if you have more people, you conceivably should have more radiocarbon dates.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe plotted the dates through time,\u201d namely, the number of radiocarbon dates from artifacts in every 100-year period for the past 15,000 years, he adds.<\/p>\n<p>The analysis indicated six periods of significant population increase or decrease during that time, including one during which population nearly doubled in eastern North America starting about 6,900 years ago and continuing apace until 5,200 years ago \u2013 not long before plant domestication began, Codding says.<\/p>\n<p>Codding notes that even though plant domestication meant \u201cthese people were producing food to feed themselves and their families, they\u2019re still hunting and foraging,\u201d eating turtles, fish, water fowl and deer, among other animals.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>The other theory<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Weitzel says the concept of niche construction is that people were harvesting wild plants, and \u201cwere able to get more food from certain plants.\u201d By manipulating the environment \u2013 such as transplanting wild plants or setting fires to create areas favorable for growth of wild food plants \u2013 they began \u201cexperimenting with these plants to see if they could grow them to be bigger or easier to collect and consume,\u201d he adds. \u201cThat kind of experimentation then leads to domestication.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Codding says: \u201cThe idea is that when times are good and people have plenty of food then they will experiment with plants. We say that doesn\u2019t provide an explanation for plant domestication in eastern North America.\u201d He believes the behavioral ecology explanation: increasing population and-or decreasing wild food resources led to plant domestication.<\/p>\n<p><u><\/u>The full study can be found at:\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org\/content\/3\/8\/160319\">http:\/\/rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org\/content\/3\/8\/160319<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>University of Utah anthropologists counted the number of carbon-dated artifacts at archaeological sites and concluded that a population boom and scarce food explain why people in eastern North America domesticated plants for the first time on the continent about 5,000 years ago. \u201cDomesticated plants and animals are part of our everyday lives, so much so [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":105,"featured_media":2958,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,9,16,17],"tags":[84,770,766,769,767,763,764,765,768],"class_list":["post-2956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research","category-science-technology","category-social-behavioral-sciences","category-sustainability","tag-anthropology","tag-arkansas","tag-farming","tag-illinois","tag-missouri","tag-plant","tag-plant-domestication","tag-population","tag-tennessee"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stage.unews.umc.utah.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2956"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stage.unews.umc.utah.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stage.unews.umc.utah.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stage.unews.umc.utah.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/105"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stage.unews.umc.utah.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2956"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/stage.unews.umc.utah.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2956\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3083,"href":"https:\/\/stage.unews.umc.utah.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2956\/revisions\/3083"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stage.unews.umc.utah.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stage.unews.umc.utah.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stage.unews.umc.utah.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stage.unews.umc.utah.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}