Last Hunters First Farmers

Download or read book Last Hunters, First Farmers written by Theron Douglas Price and published by School for Advanced Research Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During virtually the entire four-million-year history of our habitation on this planet, humans have been hunters and gatherers, dependent for nourishment on the availability of wild plants and animals. Beginning about 10,000 years ago, however, the most remarkable phenomenon in the course of human prehistory was set in motion. At locations around the world, over a period of about 5,000 years, hunters became farmers. Far more than the domestication of plant and animal species was involved in this revolution, which was accompanied by massive changes in the structure and organization of the societies that adopted agriculture and by a totally new relationship with the environment. Whereas hunter-gatherers live off the land in an extensive fashion, exploiting a diversity of resources over a broad area, farmers utilize the landscape intensively. The implications of these changes in human activity and social organization reverberate down to the present day.

Download or read book Prehistoric Ukraine written by Malcolm C. Lillie and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2020-09-30 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume covers the Prehistory of Ukraine from the Lower Palaeolithic through to the end of the Neolithic periods. This is the first comprehensive synthesis of Ukrainian Prehistory from earliest times through until the Neolithic Period undertaken by researchers who are currently investigating the Prehistory of Ukraine. At present there are no other English language books on this subject that provide a current synthesis for these periods. The chapters in this volume provide up-to-date overviews of all aspects of prehistoric culture development in Ukraine and present details of the key sites and finds for the periods studied. The book includes the most recent research from all areas of prehistory up to the Neolithic period, and, in addition, areas such as recent radiocarbon dating and its implications for culture chronology are considered; as is a consideration of aDNA and the new insights into culture history this area of research affords; alongside recent macrofossil studies of plant use, and anthropological and stable isotope studies of diet, which all combine to allow greater insights into the nature of human subsistence and cultural developments across the Palaeolithic to Neolithic periods in Ukraine. It is anticipated that this book will be an invaluable resource for students of prehistory throughout Europe in providing an English-language text that is written by researchers who are active in their respective fields and who possess an intimate knowledge of Ukrainian prehistory.

Download or read book Changing Natures written by Bill Finlayson and published by Bristol Classical Press. This book was released on 2010-10-21 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new critical perspective on the dominant narratives of the 'Neolithic Revolution', with an emphasis on local histories and hunter-gatherer dynamics.

Download or read book The First Farmers of Europe written by Stephen Shennan and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-03 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Knowledge of the origin and spread of farming has been revolutionised in recent years by the application of new scientific techniques, especially the analysis of ancient DNA from human genomes. In this book, Stephen Shennan presents the latest research on the spread of farming by archaeologists, geneticists and other archaeological scientists. He shows that it resulted from a population expansion from present-day Turkey. Using ideas from the disciplines of human behavioural ecology and cultural evolution, he explains how this process took place. The expansion was not the result of 'population pressure' but of the opportunities for increased fertility by colonising new regions that farming offered. The knowledge and resources for the farming 'niche' were passed on from parents to their children. However, Shennan demonstrates that the demographic patterns associated with the spread of farming resulted in population booms and busts, not continuous expansion.

Download or read book Farmers at the Frontier written by Kurt J Gron and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2020-02-15 with total page 725 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: All farming in prehistoric Europe ultimately came from elsewhere in one way or another, unlike the growing numbers of primary centers of domestication and agricultural origins worldwide. This fact affects every aspect of our understanding of the start of farming on the continent because it means that ultimately, domesticated plants and animals came from somewhere else, and from someone else. In an area as vast as Europe, the process by which food production becomes the predominant subsistence strategy is of course highly variable, but in a sense the outcome is the same, and has the potential for addressing more large-scale questions regarding agricultural origins. Therefore, a detailed understanding of all aspects of farming in its absolute earliest form in various regions of Europe can potentially provide a new perspective on the mechanisms by which this monumental change comes to human societies and regions. In this volume, we aim to collect various perspectives regarding the earliest farming from across Europe. Methodological approaches, archaeological cultures, and geographic locations in Europe are variable, but all papers engage with the simple question: What was the earliest farming like? This volume opens a conversation about agriculture just after the transition in order to address the role incoming people, technologies, and adaptations have in secondary adoptions. The book starts with an introduction by the editors which will serve to contextualize the theme of the volume. The broad arguments concerning the process of neolithisation are addressed, and the rationale for the volume discussed. Contributions are ordered geographically and chronologically, given the progression of the Neolithic across Europe. The editors conclude the volume with a short commentary paper regarding the theme of the volume.

Download or read book Hunters, Fishers and Farmers of Eastern Europe, 6000-3000 B.C. written by Ruth Tringham and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-11-13 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eastern Europe, in this book, embraces the area formally referred to as the ‘Marchlands of Europe’, sometimes as Eastern Central Europe, and which included, when this book was originally published in 1971, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Rumania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, East Germany and Poland. This book presented for the first time the archaeological material related to the prehistory of Central and West Europe, describing the evidence for the earlier prehistory – settlement patterns, means of subsistence and material culture – in the various natural environments of this area. It looks at the Baltic coast, the north and east European plains, the Carpathian mountain ring, the Danube basin and the Adriatic and Black Sea coasts. The evidence for late Mesolithic hunting-fishing groups is examined, their techniques and their reaction to the introduction and spread of agriculturalists, as well as the development and activities of both food-gatherers and food-producers until the early use and manufacture of metal objects. 3000 years of prehistory are covered in a way which is designed to be intelligible and useful to all those who are interested in prehistory and in eastern Europe.

Download or read book A History of Ancient Egypt written by John Romer and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2013-08-20 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ancient world comes to life in the first volume in a two book series on the history of Egypt, spanning the first farmers to the construction of the pyramids. Famed archaeologist John Romer draws on a lifetime of research to tell one history's greatest stories; how, over more than a thousand years, a society of farmers created a rich, vivid world where one of the most astounding of all human-made landmarks, the Great Pyramid, was built. Immersing the reader in the Egypt of the past, Romer examines and challenges the long-held theories about what archaeological finds mean and what stories they tell about how the Egyptians lived. More than just an account of one of the most fascinating periods of history, this engrossing book asks readers to take a step back and question what they've learned about Egypt in the past. Fans of Stacy Schiff's Cleopatra and history buffs will be captivated by this re-telling of Egyptian history, written by one of the top Egyptologists in the world.