In Guns, Germs and Steel, Chapter 8, Jared Diamond discusses the development of domesticated animals and plants from the Fertile Crescent, and shows this graphically in Figure 8.1. The area borders the Mediterranean and includes parts or all of present-day Israel, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Jordan. Food production through crop cultivation and animal husbandry led to dense human population, food surplus storage, and the presence of nonfarming specialists. Related developments include establishment of cites, writing, and even the growth of empires; in brief, what Diamond terms “civilization.”
In Chapter 10, he expands on those ideas to discuss the spread of the animals and plants. For the Fertile Crescent, he calls this a “centrifugal wave.” Building on the work of other scientists, in Figure 10.2 he shows how this “wave” reaches Greece, Cyprus, and even India by 6500 B.C. Next it spread to Egypt, central Europe, southern Spain, and finally to Britain by about 3500 B.C. The date by which these crops and animals reached eastern Africa is not known, but the crops have been documented for Ethiopia.
Tuesday, September 4, 2018
What is the direction of the spread of domesticated animals and plants from the Middle East (Fertile Crescent)?
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