More Guns, Germs, and Steel

   Today in class, we started where we left off in the Guns, Germs, and Steel video. These were the notes I took today:

  • Stone Age people were becoming farmers- first farmers in the world
  • Plant domestication=farming      starting to control nature
  • Places were farming developed: Middle East- wheat and barley, China- rice, the Americas- squash, corns, beans, Africa- Sorghum, millet, and yams
  • Where farming emerged- relatively advanced civilizations followed (not Papa New Guinea)
  • New Guinea plants cannot be stored for long periods of time and aren't nutritious
  • So little proteins in highlands, they would sometimes resort to eating spiders
  • People with access to most productive plants would have a productive society- it came down to GEOGRAPHICAL LUCK
  • Humans start to interact differently with animals- animal domestication - controlling breeding, etc - using for meat, milk, cloth, and more - new way of life
  • Animal domestication also helped with plant domestication (complementary)
  • Goats and sheep were the first animals to be domesticated
  • With invention of plow, productivity increased (before the Industrial Revolution) - horses, oxen, etc. would pull a plow
  • In New Guinea and other parts, they couldn't use plows because they didn't have the animals to do so - they had pigs, which couldn't really be used
  • Best animals to domesticate/use for work: large, plant-eating animals, which weigh at least 100 pounds
  • 14 animals that have been domesticated and have proved to be useful: goats, sheep, pigs, cows, horses, donkeys, bactrian camels, Arabian camels, water buffalo, llamas, reindeer, yaks, mitcens, and Bali cattle

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