WEEK 4

Part 1:  Hunter gathers and Agriculture

There are benefits to both forms of subsistence patterns for hunters the benefits is they can go out and catch different kinds of foods and they can gather which ever berries are in season that time of year. The hunters and gathers can also share food amongst people around them and they have the option of mobility because they can move where the food moves. For agriculture this means that have to be more stable and put down roots. They have the luxury have always having food instead of the hunter’s gathers that might go hungry if they can’t catch their food. Agriculture is farming and they have the opportunities to advance when technology does as well.

The disadvantages of gathering would be that your population can’t grow very large because of the lack of food. If every day you had to go into the forest and hunt and gather things for your meal you would have the proper nutrients but the populations would ever be able to settle down because you would constantly be moving around to find food.  Some of the disadvantages of agriculture would be the lack of nutrients because farms could grow the same crop all year all they would have is one form of a food group compared to gathers that can go out and hunt a meat, collect a fruit and vegetable in order to meet their body’s needs.  One of the main disadvantages with agriculture would be lack of variety.

When it comes to having healthier diets hunters and gathers have a better chance of being healthy. They have the option to have a complex meal including every food group. A hunter gather could go out into the forest kill a rabbit, gather an apple, find a potatoes and maybe even a pumpkin and have enough nutrients to provide a healthy diet for their body. When it comes to agriculture they don’t have as balanced diets as hunter gathers and in some of the studies it shows when people switch to farming some people had stunted grow and other nutrition problems because people weren’t getting all their nutrients from having different foods. It’s very important to have a balanced diet and hunters and gathers defiantly have the better diet.

The human population switched to agriculture because it was easier for people to be able to farm their crops and years long rather than go out each day and gather food. Agriculture also took off because people were able to settle down in one place and build a home rather than always being mobile. Population was able to spread to large numbers because of farming and without it the population today would be so large. With agriculture it also made way for specialized agriculture because people weren’t always on the go anymore people had more time to create better ways of life. Farming opened up a whole new world people was able to learn new trades and knowledge and technology had a chance to spread.

Part 2:  Economics and Trade:

There is a direct relationship between the availability of surplus and the ability to trade.  If you don’t have surplus then you are unable to trade. If a farmer has a farm and he only always grows enough food to feed his family for the whole year than he won’t have anything left over to trade.  If the farm were to expand his farm even just a little in order to make a surplus then he would have goods left over each year that he could trade with others to make money and add variety to his family.

There are many benefits that go along with trade but two of the most important ones are technology and variety. When it comes to trade farmers could trade crops for baked goods or even for blacksmith tools in order to better their farm and life. With having new technology the farmers will be able to advance. Being able to trade with other people would also bring variety and more nutritional value to the farmers and their families. If a farmer only knows how to grow corn and nothing else that would supply a well balanced diet but it he can trade with another farmer who has wheat it would add more nutrition and variety. One example stated in the text is that the kota people were musicians and blacksmiths and they were able to proved their neighbors with tool and music in exchange they would receive ghee a form of butter for certain important ceremonies.

One major negative form trade would be silent trade which is where two people have some much distrust between one another that they don’t even trade in person. It would work where two different tribes would have a spot in the forest where they would leave the good s they wished to trade and then the other tribe would come and take the goods and leave what they believe to be a fair trade. If the other tribe comes back and is unsatisfied with the goods they would then leave the goof untouched signifying they expect more for the trade next time.  Another negative form of trade is negative reciprocity, meaning a tribe with more valuable goods is going to want to try and trade the technology for a lot and may even cheat the other tribe to get as much as they can out of them. One example would be if a tribe had tools and they were trading with another tribe for corn, they may not need the corn but the other tribe needs the tools. The tribe trading the tools is going to want twice or maybe even three times the amount of corn over tools.

The relationship between the developments of Agriculture and the development of trade go hand in hand. Trade would have never been possible if it wasn’t for agriculture. You would be able to trade if you didn’t have a surplus and you would have a surplus if you didn’t have farming. Technology has helped advance trade and agriculture and this is why everyone had switched over to agriculture. Agriculture happened first which started the whole relationship of trade.