DOMESTICATION OF PLANTS AND ANIMALS

What does domestication mean?

To train plants and animals to be useful to people.

Before they switched to farming, humans got all their food from wild plants and animals in their environment.

• They hunted wild game like deer, wild pigs, and large birds.

• They collected wild fruits, berries, and nuts.

• They fished and collected shellfish and crabs.

• They gathered wild tubers (root vegetables, like potatoes and carrots), vegetables, and grains.

For thousands of years humans lived like this. But then, around 10,000 years ago humans started to domesticate plants and animals and adopt a farming way of life.

WHY????

• Maybe farming was easier and less time consuming than hunting and gathering

• Perhaps farming was more reliable than hunting and gathering and promised food all year round

• Or, maybe farming just provided more food for a greater number of people

• Farming definitely wasn’t easier than hunting and gathering. Early farmers would have had a very rough time and were highly dependent on the weather. If a drought came, they couldn‘t simply walk to a different area like hunter gatherers.

Domestication changes how plants and animals behave so that, over time, they end up looking different from their wild cousins.

The domestication of plants and animals dramatically changed the way humans interacted with their environment.

Now, instead of merely living within their environment, humans were managing it.

Domesticated animals and plants now depend on humans for their survival.

Even though population growth was the CAUSE of the adoption of agriculture, it was also the RESULT.

As a result of farming…

1) More food is produced for more people

2) But more people are needed to do all the work required

So people began having more children to fill this demand= societies and villages got BIGGER. Civilizations start to develop.