For the first 98 percent of the 500,000 or so years of truly human existence, small bands of nomadic hunters and gatherers kept themselves nourished and clothed by stalking herds of wild animals and gathering wild fruits and nuts. This simple and mobile life produced few technological innovations, but those few were of enormous significance, not just for the survival of the tribes but for the evolution of human societies: the flaked stone tools for killing game, cutting meat, and scraping hides for warmth; the later composite hunting devices like spear-throwers and bows and arrows; and the mining of pigments and invention of lamps for the production of the remarkable cave paintings of the Upper Paleolithic. At the same time, this nomadic existence saw little advance in the production or processing of food and clothing, and did not foster the creation of implements that we would normally associate with even the more primitive forms of human endeavor. Take pottery as one example: though Cro-Magnon artists produced molded clay figurines of the animals they hunted, any attempt to manipulate that plastic material into the form of watertight containers would be thwarted by the very fragility of the vessel when carried from kill site to water source to protective cave. Some 10,000 years ago—that is, a short 500 generations past—there occurred the first real revolution in the course of human existence, when people’s desire for a permanent and assured food supply prompted them to begin manipulating the natural course of plant and animal reproduction, beginning in the Near East and northern Europe, where the variety and abundance of wild plant and animal species had already been harvested for a millennium or two by seminomadic groups to supplement their diet: the Maglemosians of the Danish coast found a semipermanent food supply in the fish of the sea, which they harvested with newly invented bone hooks and rush nets; and the Natufians of the Near East developed saw-like sickles to cut the wild grain and simple stone grinders to process it into flour. It seems likely that domesticated animals’ need for fodder meant that the cultivation of plants occurred first, perhaps an extension of the presumed role of women in Paleolithic gathering, just as men’s experience in hunting evolved into the herding of cattle and other animals (Source: Ancient Technology).
Poor Food Resources, Clashes and Innovative Plans: Towards Food Related Initiatives
