Explain the relative influence of cultural and ecological factors in the advent of food production in the old world.
“Necessity is the mother of invention”, goes the old saying. Food production too if seen in this context can be said to have evolved out of necessity. The evolution of food production had been a complex process. The story of food production in the old world has been narrated in many ways by many people. Some more convincing, some less and some fighting a losing battle to growing number of evidences to support various other theories. Every theory that explains the advent of food production can be said to either support the cultural factors or the ecological factors, and some even both.
The first person who gave us a proper idea of how food production began was Gordon V Childe. His focus was mainly on the glaciations that occurred at around 10 000 B.C. He focused his theory mainly on the ecological changes. The explanation given by Childe was, that the desiccation that happened in the previously well watered regions, where the agriculture later evolved led to the creation of certain small patches of land on the banks of rivers like Nile, Euphrates and Tigris, that provided the stage setting for symbiosis between man, animals and plants. Thus leading to ‘domestication’. This was referred to as the Oasis hypothesis.
Robert Braidwood on the other hand did not support this idea. He said that the climate change after the Pleistocene was not significant enough to have brought about these changes. He argued that if that was the case then, agriculture could have evolved after the previous Pleistocenes. He talks about the cultural factor in this context. He gives the reasoning that, “Agriculture did not start earlier because culture was not ready to accept it”. Braidwood also attributes it to the development of apt technology to utilize the plants and hunt the animals effectively. He argued that certain plants and animals are found only in certain regions and an association was required between the humans, for the domestication to take place. This region where the association occurred was called the nuclear zone and the hypothesis aptly named the Nuclear Zone Hypothesis.
Lewis Binford rejects both Childe and Braidwood. He highlights Demographic stress as the main reason, behind the move towards food production. He criticizes Childe on the grounds that the climate change after the Pleistocene was not significant enough to produce any significant depletion in mega fauna. He further explains that if the number of people living in an environment multiplies to a level, that is difficult for the environment to sustain, then those living in the region will be seeking an alternate mode of subsistence. Such an ecological stress can be of two types:
-External Demographic Stress and
-Internal Demographic Stress
External Stress happens, when a group of people move into a region where there is a population already living and exploiting food resource. On the other hand internal stress happens when the population of a given region, grows to such an extent that it is no longer possible to sustain all of them, with the given amount of resources. Thomas Mayer was strong proponent of the Internal Demographic Stress theory. Wherever demographic zones intersected with the nuclear zones, agriculture started.
Now we look at the ideas put forward by another eminent researcher on this subject-Kent Flannery. Flannery rejects Childe, doesn’t accept Braidwood and is not convinced by Binford. He talked in terms of two distinct types of resource procurement systems:
1. Positive feedback resource management System and
2. Negative feedback resource management System
When the system expands, when exploited and thus allows deviation, it is called Positive feedback and when it contracts and counter acts deviation, it called Negative feedback. To put it in simple words, food production is Positive feedback and animal hunting is Negative feedback, and when Positive feedback is preferred over Negative feedback, agriculture arises. Flannery however doesn’t explain why this transition takes place.
Another interesting hypothesis is the marginal zone hypothesis. It was by Lewis Binford and refined by Kent Flannery. This theory explained that, there was an optimal environment under where the wild progenitors of the plants and animals could be found. But when there was a population stress in the periphery or the margins to put it more correctly, there was the need to expand this optimal zone beyond, which was done by the process of agriculture.
Mc Nish gave the explanation that humans took to food production, when hunting no longer remained an energy efficient mode of nutrition. To put it in simple words, when the calorie spent was more than the calorie gained from hunting, a more energy efficient method had to be thought about.
Marvin Harris proposed that proximity was one of the prerequisites of evolution of food production. He said that, there needs to be a stage setting for interaction between the subjects involved before a new system could be established. This came to be called the Proximity theory.
When the different hypotheses are listed out and scrutinized, it seems difficult to arrive upon the conclusion on which one is relatively more important from the point of view of introduction of food production. Each comes with its own Strong points and loop holes. Childes theory has been now ruled out by the majority as strong evidences have not been backed up. Braidwood talks about human nature, which again cannot be backed up by archeological evidence. Binford gives us and idea of ‘why’ this happened, but not to ‘how’ and ‘when’. Flannery on the other hand tells us about the transition from the Positive to Negative feedback system, but does not tell us about the reason to why such a transition would take place, in the first place. The most likely answer to this question would be that a mix of demographic, ecological and cultural factors and their relation between each other was responsible for man taking to food production. The aim of man has been to lead a more easy life. Food production made life easier for man, providing him with more leisure and more steady supply of food to keep him going. What so ever be the reason, Culture and Ecology both played almost an equal role in man’s journey towards food production.