"It was only within the last 11,00 years that some peoples turned to what is termed food production: that is domesticating wild animals and plants and eating the resulting livestock and crops" -Diamond
I use Diamond’s book to focus on the historical context of the domestication of animals because it shows the early stages of consolidation and the introduction of germs. Humans have learned how to confine natural resources, like grain & goats for example, to maximize food production and therefore caloric intake. Human’s started off as hunter gatherers in small nomadic groups who were frequently on the move; that is hunting animals and gathering plants wherever they could find food sources. But the fundamental problem with hunting is that it has never been a productive way to find enough food - It takes time to track each animal & hunting is extremely unpredictable so most hunter gathers relied more on gathering then hunting. But, most of the biomass in our natural environment does not yield anything that humans can eat. “Most biomass (living biological matter) on land is in the form of wood and leaves, most of which we cannot digest” (Diamond) so producing food rather than hunting and gathering is more effective for it produces more edible biomass per acre, or calories per acre. Hunter gather populations were so sparse because food sources and food intake is low. If you want to feed a lot of people you have to find a more productive method to hunting and gathering because this method only supports small groups of people. There was a radical shift in human behavior due to climate changes that caused food to become sparser due to colder and dryer weather - people started growing their own food. Rather then following food sources around to different locations, for the first time, people started bringing these resources back to them by planting seeds. People were becoming farmers. In the early stages of farming, without knowing it, people started to control nature. Humans started to interrupt the natural cycle of plants, actually changing the plants themselves, known as domestication. There was also a transformation in the way humans interacted with animals. People started domesticating animals because they provided another steady source of food in addition to crops. Instead of going out to hunt, humans had a dependable meat supply. Animals could also be used for their milk (which was extremely high in protein), hair and skins could be used for clothing to keep humans warm in the winter, and animals could be used for transportation and muscle power to plow land. Domesticated animals proved to be invaluable and thus became an integral part of the agricultural way of life in addition to plants. The combination of animals and plants were complementary because the combination created a beneficial cycle. Animals could plow the land, eat the crop, and fertilize the crop. The transition to farming was a pivotal turning point in human history. “Today, most people on Earth consume food that they produced themselves or someone else produced for them” (Diamond). Hunter gathers could not nearly produce as much food as farmers so farming societies started to prosper in terms of population. “Plant and animal domestication meant much more food and hence much denser human populations” (Diamond). The domestication of animals and plants has reaped many benefits for humanity but also came hand-in-hand with many negative consequences for us and animals...
