The first few millennia after the Ice Age saw human societies in many parts of the world adopt entirely new lifeways based on agriculture and animal domestication. These new strategies took hold first in sub-tropical regions, not in temperate Europe where Mesolithic cultures flourished.
Agriculture appeared more-or-less simultaneously in many parts of the Old World, and the same development occurred in a somewhat similar manner in the Americas. Thus, food production was a development rather than an invention, a development in response to broadly similar environmental and economic conditions that appeared in many parts of the world after the Ice Age. It was not a dramatic invention that appeared in one place and spread to othersÑalthough this process of spread was, of course, important in later millennia.
This point is vital as a starting point for our perspective on theories about the origins of food production. But first we must describe the dramatic environmental changes that unfolded at the end of the Ice Age, and caused major cultural changes among hunter-gatherer societies all over the globe.
Subsistence agriculture is non-intensive agriculture, that is to say farming without mechanization or other means of intensifying agriculture. In this section, we take a close look at the dynamics of subsistence agriculture, so that you achieve an understanding of some of the practical problems early prehistoric farmers faced.
The example we use comes from central Africa, where the Gwembe Tonga of the Middle Zambezi Valley still used traditional agricultural methods right up to the 1960s. Then, the colonial government of what was then the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland built the Kariba Dam across the Zambezi River, a vast hydroelectric scheme that created a huge lake in the Middle Zambezi Valley. This flooded much of the Gwembe Tonga's traditional homelands, and changed their agricultural system for ever.
We visit with the Gwembe Tonga in two ways. First, you will have a lengthy piece of reading, which follows, that introduces you to the people and their environment. Then you can visit the Gwembe Valley via Hypercard exercise (Gwembe Tonga) that teaches you the realities of surviving in the harsh Zambezi Valley environment, and the dynamics of subsistence agriculture along the way.
First, the reading. We suggest you settle down for a fairly lengthy, undisturbed piece of reading, for it is essential that you understand the material in this account fully, if you are to get the most out of the Hypercard simulation for the Gwembe Tonga.