Page 73 - Berkshire Encyclopedia Of World History Vol I - Abraham to Coal

this fleeting world / beginnings: the era of foragers tfw-13

farms that relatively permanent settlements appeared
nearby. One site contains almost 150 small huts built of
stone. In addition to eels, the inhabitants of these small
settlements lived off local species of game, from emu to
kangaroo, as well as local vegetable foods such as daisy
yam tubers, ferns, and convolvulus (herbs and shrubs of
the morning glory family).
Some communities began to harvest plants such as
yams, fruit, and grains in ways that suggest early steps
towards agriculture.Yams were (and are today) harvested
in ways that encouraged regrowth, and people deliber-
ately planted fruit seeds in refuse heaps to create fruit
groves. In some of the more arid areas of central Aus-
tralia, early European travelers observed communities
harvesting wild millet with stone knives and storing it in
large haystacks. Archeologists have discovered grind-
stones, which were used to grind seeds as early as fifteen
thousand years ago in some regions. In many coastal
Indigenous peoples of the North American
regions of Australia fishing using shell fishhooks and
northwest subsisted from fishing and
small boats also allowed for denser settlement. In gen-
exhibited a way of life called affluent
eral, the coasts were more thickly settled than inland
foraging. The illustration is of the designs
areas.
on a large Tsimshian box used to store
The appearance of communities of affluent foragers
blankets, an important form of wealth.
prepared the way for the next fundamental transition in
human history: the appearance of communities that sys-
devise technologies that increase the output of resources tematically manipulated their environments to extract
from a particular area. Anthropologists refer to such for- more resources from a given area.The set of technologies
agers as “affluent foragers.” that these people used is often called “agriculture”; we
The examples that follow are taken from Australia refer to the era in which agriculture made its appearance
from a region in which foraging lifeways can be studied as the “agrarian era.”
more closely because they have survived into modern
times. During the last five thousand years new, smaller, The Era of Foragers in
and more finely made stone tools appeared in many parts World History
of Australia, including small points that people may Historians have often assumed that little changed during
have used as spear tips. Some tools were so beautifully the era of foragers. In comparison with later eras of
made that they were traded as ritual objects over hun- human history this assumption may seem to be true. It is
dreds of miles. New techniques meant new ways of also true that change was normally so slow that it was
extracting resources. In the state of Victoria people built imperceptible within a single lifetime; thus, few men and
elaborate eel traps, some with canals up to 300 meters women in the era of foragers could have appreciated the
long.At certain points people constructed nets or tapered wider significance of technological changes. Nevertheless,
traps, using bark strips or plaited rushes, to harvest the in comparison with the prehuman era, the pace of tech-
trapped eels. So many eels could be kept in these eel nological change during the era of foragers was striking.