Agricultural Origins and Dispersals - The Domestication of Animals and Foodstuffs

Carl O. Sauer is a geographer whose special interest is the way in which particular plants and animals have become domesticated by particular people. The classical view of agricultural development has held that mankind progresses in stages from hunting through pastoral nomadism through agriculture. Professor Sauer's quite different premises are these: agriculture did not originate from a shortage of food: domestication is found in areas of marked diversity in plants or animals; primitive cultivators could not establish themselves in large river valleys subject to flood; agriculture began in wooded lands; the inventors of agriculture had previously acquired special skills that predisposed them to agricultural experiments; the founders of agriculture were sedentary folk. Professor Sauer contends that it is a combination of special inclination and a relative amount of leisure time which caused certain people to domesticate certain animals and plants.