Summary
Summary The Human Web J.R. Mcneill & William H. Mcneill
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Comprehensive summary of each chapter called with a summary of the key points in this chapter.
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Chapter 1. THE HUMAN APPRENTICESHIP- 4 million years ago, the grounding took place in Africa, where our apelike ancestors ventured
onto savanna landscapes.
- Homo erectus : 1.6 million years ago.
- Homo sapiens: especially behavioral and social changes.
- They had a varied high quality diet to sustain their bodies and their energy-consuming
enlarged brains. Proliferating tool types and very rapid spread throughout the earth.
- Specialized in adaptability (climate, food)
- Two feet hands for sticks and stones, defendance. smaller teeth
- Control of fire repelling predators, driving game into traps, warmth, light, cooking, focus
of social life.
- Full deployment of language to create symbolic meanings allowed social behavior to
attain increasingly precise coordination. Agreed upon meanings could be changed and
improved whenever experience disappointed expectation.
- Song and dance warm sense of emotional solidarity that makes cooperation and mutual
support in dangerous situations much firmer than before. Became universal. It dissipated
frictions and rivalries among all who took part. Established an enlarged human-scale polity
among our ancestors.
- Expansion around the globe 40.000 and 10.000 years ago probably resulted from territorial
rivalries among adjacent human tribes. All that we needed for global expansion was a
capacity to find food and shelter in new environments.
- Early humans were skilled hunters that preferred big game large die-off of large-bodied
animals.
- Impact on environment increased (clothing, shelter, tools, transport, decoration etc.)
- Deliberately setting landscapes on fire to make hunt easier fire tolerant forms of
vegetation.
- Improvements in weaponry (javelins and arrows) and food gathering
- Women and children specialized in gathering man in hunting food sharing, family units
- Experts in spirit world intermediaries between the spirits and ordinary people. capacity to
get into trance. Concept of a spirit world invisible and parallel to human society. Animism
- Fission-fusion sociality: meet with other bands to enjoy song and dance, arrange marriages
and exchange information and objects.
- About 16.000 years ago a few human communities learned to preserve food, thus assuring
year round nutrition staying in one place for most of the year, improvements in
equipment to take full advantage of temporary food gluts. Housing more commodious.
Leisure time.
- EXAMPLES:
- located along the pacific and arctic coast of north America. Capture migratory fish and
whales.
- Southern France and northern Spain, Magdalenian cave art. Captured reindeers?
- Southwest Asia. Natufian sites. People ate wheat to feed themselves. (development of grain
farming)
, Chapter 2. SHIFTING TO FOOD PRODUCTION 11.000 – 3.000 YEARS AGO
- Increasing number of people, domesticated plants, animals because of mutual dependence
allowed them to capture far more energy from the earth than before.
- Altered the traits and behavior of plants and animals really quickly.
- In unusually rich and diversified landscapes, communities of hunters and gatherers found it
convenient to settle down for all or most of the year, whereupon already familiar methods
for encouraging the growth of useful plants acquired wider scope than before. Whenever
communities settled down it was convenient to have especially useful plants growing close
by (women got sense of personal and familial ownership)
- Only when familial units became independent consumers of food could farming take off.
- A settled way of life in unusually rich environments allowed families to support more than a
single small child. population growth food supplies scarcer agriculture
- In southwest Asia wheat and barley were the main crops while goats and sheep were the
first herbivorous domesticated animals.
- Where soils were unusually moist or where seasonal flooding occurred a few communities
began to sow wheat on land where grain did not grow naturally. (Jordan Valley near
Jericho)this was the earliest well attested example of settled farming.
- Wheat plants adjusted to new conditions created by harvesting mutations, selection
- Human herdsmen safeguarding the animals and leading them to pasture by day and into
corrals at night, took over the role of dominant male in the social structure of domesticated
flocks. Killing off defiant animals breeding selectively for submissive behavior.
- Apprentice farmers constantly exchanged skills, knowledge, seed, and breeding stock with
neighboring communities.
- From its initial cradle land, the southwest Asian style of mixed farming and animal
domestication proceeded to expand in every direction.
- Adaptation of grain farming to higher elevations and more northerly latitudes where
sufficient rain fell to sustain forests. slash and burn cycle.
- New domestications and new ways of exploiting flocks and herds greatly enhanced the
productivity of this southwest asian style of farming.
- Goats then sheep were persuaded to allow human hands to milk them digest fresh milk.
Increased coloric yield greater herds diversion of food resources
- The use of domestic animals as beasts of burden and for pulling plows and wagons.
- Plowing remained by far the most important use of animal muscle power increased
ground that family could cultivate humans and oxen could produce more grain than they
needed for their own consumption.
- Beginning agriculture in China in Yangzi Valley. Rice yielded far more abundantly than the
grains of Southwest Asia. However it was more laborious. rice farming became basic to
Chinese and other east Asian societies. Work in the field shaped family relations and social
structures. It also required complex local agreements to regulate access to and delivery of
running water.
- Before rice, about 4.000 years ago, agriculture featuring millet, soybeans and pigs supported
the earliest Chinese dynasties.
- Tropical style of garden cultivation starchy roots like taro and yams and a variety of tree
crops together with sugar cane and sometimes also rice. Year round growth permitted
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