From: tcbruno@athena.mit.edu (Tom Bruno)
Newsgroups: sci.archaeology
Subject: Re: Diet of early humans
Date: 17 Apr 92 02:06:12 GMT
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

In article <wadley.703300196@mullauna.cs.mu.OZ.AU>, wadley@mullauna.cs.mu.OZ.AU (Gregory Robert Wadley) writes:
|> Archaeology is not my specialty (as will become obvious),
|> but I'm trying to find out the current belief on our early diet.
|> 
|> I get the impression that the older "man the hunter" picture
|> of pre-agriculture humans has faded a bit, in favour of a more
|> gathering-orientated version.
|> 
|> Did our history go:
|> 
|> Gatherer --> Hunter/gatherer --> agriculture
|> (> ?? BP)    (?? BP to 10000BP)  (10000BP to now) ?
|> 
|> In other words, was there a significant change from primate diet to
|> hunter/gatherer diet?
|> 
|> Is there a date before which we are no longer doing archaeology,
|> but doing paleontology or something else instead?
|> 
|> Is there any concensus on why agriculture started?
|> 
|> If anyone can help me out, or give references, I'd much appreciate it.

The absolute best discussions on the origins of agriculture come from
Kent Flannery.  He's published numerous papers on incipient agriculture in
both Mesoamerica and the Near East- look for his articles in back issues of
the American Journal of Anthropology- one good one dates to 1969.  Sorry I
don't have better names and dates for citations- I'm typing this in from a
public computer cluster.

Flannery postulates that agriculture did not start for any one reason- rather,
that it was a complex interaction of variables that disturbed the equilibrium
of the hunter-gathering system, gradually inducing a positive feedback loop
which is still in effect today.  Little variables such as population pressures,
availability of 'domesticatable plants,' the rise of sedentary life (which is
not necessarily linked to agriculturalism) and what is known as 'seasonality'
and 'scheduling'- the exploitation of certain resources on a regular basis at
certain times of the year.  It's an extremely complicated system, which also
happens to be site-specific.  Variables and conditions were considerably different
for Mesoamerica and the Near East, including the species of domesticates!  

So, if you can call that a consensus...

And concerning our shift from gathering to agriculturalism, there are many
models currently being toyed with.  One of the favorites goes something like
this (sans dates):

Gatherer -->  Scavenger/Gatherer  -->  Hunter/Gatherer 
                                       Scavenger/Gatherer
                                       Gatherer

then to  -->  Sedentary Non-agriculturalist
              Sedentary pre-agriculturalist (mostly hunter-gatherer)
              Nomadic pastoralist
              Hunter-Gatherer
              Scavenger-Gatherer

then to -->   Sedentary non-agriculturalist
              Sedentary agriculturalist
              Sedentary pre-agriculturalist (complex hunter-gatherer)
              Nomadic pastoralist
              HUnter/Gatherer
              Scavenger-gatherer

these basic groups (until VERY recently) all survived until modernity.
In other words, in both cases that I've presented, recent theories are rejecting
anything as simple as a 'prime mover' or singular path to what many humans have
become now.  Also, the more that archaeology and anthropology become quantitative
and more like 'hard' science, the more we are beginning to realize that many
old theories on these subjects simply can't hold water, for lack of evidence.
It's not that any of theories are wrong- it's just that we simply don't know 
enough to say anything so definitively anymore.  The trend has been towards
diversification and complexity in describing the rise of agricultural man, and
I think that it's substantially better than anything else I've read or heard 
about.

tom bruno
department of archaeology
mit