Climate reversals and the transition to agriculture

Journal of Economic Growth

Volumn 14, Issue 1, 2009, Pages 27-53

  Dow, Gregory K ^a   Reed, Clyde G ^a   Olewiler, Nancy ^a  

^a SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY   (Canada)

Author keywords

Anthropology; Archaeology; Climate change; Economic development; Economic growth; Foraging; Hunting and gathering; Neolithic Revolution; Origin of agriculture; Originof cultivation; Population dynamics; Prehistory; Technological change; Technology

Indexed keywords

EID: 62749156044     PISSN: 13814338     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/s10887-009-9038-x     Document Type: Article

References (63)

1. Ashraf, Q., & Galor, O. (2008a). Dynamics and stagnation in the Malthusian epoch: Theory and evidence, working paper. Department of Economics, Brown University.
2. Ashraf, Q., & Galor, O. (2008b). The "Out of Africa" hypothesis, human genetic diversity, and comparative economic development, working paper. Department of Economics, Brown University.
3. Ashraf, Q., & Michalopoulos, S. (2006). The climatic origins of the Neolithic revolution: A theory of long-run development via climate-induced technological progress, working paper. Department of Economics, Brown University.
4. Baker M.J. (2008) A structural model of the transition to agriculture. Journal of Economic Growth, 13(4): 257-292. 10.1007/s10887-008-9034-6
5. Balter M. (2007) Seeking agriculture's ancient roots. Science, 316(June 29): 1830-1835
6. Bar-Yosef O. (2002) The Natufian culture and the early Neolithic: Social and economic trends in Southwestern Asia. In: Bellwood P., Renfrew C. (eds) Examining the farming/language dispersal hypothesis. McDonald Institute Monographs, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, pp 113-126
7. Bar-Yosef O. (2002) Natufian. In: Fitzhugh B., Habu J. (eds) Beyond foraging and collecting: Evolutionary change in hunter-gatherer settlement systems. Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, New York, pp 91-149
8. Bar-Yosef O., Meadow R.H. (1995) The origins of agriculture in the near east, Ch 3. In: Price T.D., Gebauer A.B. (eds) Last hunters, first farmers: New perspectives on the prehistoric transition to agriculture. School of American Research Press, Santa Fe, New Mexico, pp 39-94
9. Bellwood P. (2005) First farmers: The origins of agricultural societies. Blackwell, Oxford
10. Campbell B.G., Loy J.D., Cruz-Uribe K. (2006) Humankind emerging. Pearson, New York
11. Childe V.G. (1951) Man makes himself. New American Library, New York
12. Colledge S.M. (1998) Identifying pre-domestication cultivation using multivariate analysis. In: Damania A.B., Valkoun J., Wilcox G.H., Qualset C.O. (eds) The origins of agriculture and crop domestication. ICARDA, Aleppo, Syria, pp 121-131
13. Colledge S.M. (2002) Identifying pre-domestication cultivation in the archaeobotanical record using multivariate analysis: Presenting the case for quantification. In: Cappers R., Bottema S., Baruch U. (eds) The transition from foraging to farming in Southwest Asia. Ex orient, Berlin, pp 141-152
14. Cronin T.M. (1999) Principles of paleoclimatology. Columbia University Press, New York
15. Deur D. (1999) Salmon, sedentism, and cultivation: Toward an environmental prehistory of the northwest coast, Ch. 7. In: Hirt P., Goble D. (eds) Northwest lands and peoples: An environmental history anthology. University of Washington Press, Seattle, pp 119-144
16. Deur D. (2002) Plant cultivation on the northwest coast: A reconsideration. Journal of Cultural Geography, 19(2): 9-35
17. Diamond J. (1997) Guns, germs, and steel: The fate of human societies. Norton, New York
18. Dillehay T., Rossen J., Andres T., Williams D. (2007) Preceramic adoption of peanut, squash, and cotton in northern Peru. Science, 316(June 29): 1890-1893
19. Dow, G. K., Olewiler, N., & Reed, C. G. (2005). The transition to agriculture: Climate reversals, population density, and technical change, available at http://ideas.repec.org/p/wpa/wuwpeh/0509003.html
20. Dow, G. K., & Reed, C. G. (2008). Stagnation and innovation before agriculture, working paper. Department of Economics, Simon Fraser University, available at http://www.sfu.ca/~gdow/research.html.
21. Flannery K.V. (1986) Guila Naquitz. Academic Press, New York
22. Galor, O. (2005). From stagnation to growth: Unified growth theory. In P. Aghion & S. N. Durlauf (Eds.), Handbook of Economic Growth (Vol. 1A). The Netherlands: Elsevier North-Holland.
23. Galor, O., & Moav, O. (2009). The Neolithic origins of variations in life expectancy, working paper. Department of Economics, Brown University.
24. Galor O., Weil D.N. (2000) Population, technology, and growth: From Malthusian stagnation to the demographic transition and beyond. The American Economic Review, 90(4): 806-828
25. Goebel T., Waters M.R., O'Rourke D.H. (2008) The late Pleistocene dispersal of modern humans in the Americas. Science, 319(March 14): 1497-1502
26. Habu J. (2004) Ancient Jomon of Japan. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
27. Harlan J.R. (1995) The living fields: Our agricultural heritage. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
28. Hibbs D., Olsson O. (2004) Geography, biogeography, and why some countries are rich and others are poor. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 101: 3715-3720. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0305531101
29. Higham C. (1995) The transition to rice cultivation in southeast Asia, Ch 5. In: Price T.D., Gebauer A.B. (eds) Last hunters, first farmers: New perspectives on the prehistoric transition to agriculture. School of American Research Press, Santa Fe, New Mexico, pp 127-155
30. Hillman G.C., Davies M.S. (1990) Measured domestication rates in wild wheats and barley under primitive cultivation, and their archaeological implications. Journal of World Prehistory, 4(2): 157-222. doi: 10.1007/ BF00974763
31. Hillman G., Hedges R., Moore A., Colledge S., Pettitt P. (2001) New evidence of lateglacial cereal cultivation at Abu Hureyra on the Euphrates. The Holocene, 11(4): 383-393. doi: 10.1191/095968301678302823
32. Johnson A.W., Earle T. (2000) The evolution of human societies: From foraging band to agrarian state (2nd ed). Stanford University Press, Stanford
33. Keeley L.H. (1995) Protoagricultural practices among hunter-gatherers: A cross-cultural survey, Ch. 9. In: Price T.D., Gebauer A.B. (eds) Last hunters, first farmers: New perspectives on the prehistoric transition to agriculture. School of American Research Press, Sante Fe, New Mexico, pp 243-272
34. Kelly R.I. (1995) The foraging spectrum: Diversity in hunter-gatherer lifeways. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C.
35. Locay L. (1989) From hunting and gathering to agriculture. Economic Development and Cultural Change, 37(4): 737-756. doi: 10.1086/451758
36. Locay L. (1997) Population equilibrium in primitive societies. The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, 37(4): 747-767. doi: 10.1016/ S1062-9769(97)90002-8
37. Lu T.L.D. (1999) The transition from foraging to farming and the origin of agriculture in China, BAR International Series 774. Hadrian Books, Oxford
38. Marcus J., Kent V.F. (1996) Zapotec Civilization: How urban society evolved in Mexico's Oaxaca valley. Thames & Hudson, London
39. Matsuoka Y., Vigouroux Y., Goodman M., Sanchez J., Buckler E., Doebley J. (2002) A single domestication for maize shown by multilocus microsatellite genotyping. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 99(9): 6080-6084. doi: 10.1073/ pnas.052125199
40. McDougall I., Brown F.H., Fleagle J.G. (2005) Stratigraphic placement and age of modern humans from Kibish, Ethiopia. Nature 433(February 17): 733-736
41. McEvedy C., Jones R. (1978) Atlas of world population history. Penguin Books Ltd, New York, NY
42. McManus J.F. (2004) Palaeoclimate: A great grand-daddy of ice cores. Nature, 429(June 10): 611-612
43. Mithen S. (2003) After the ice: A global human history, 20,000-5000 BC. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London
44. Moore A.M.T., Hillman G.C., Legge A.J. (2000) Village on the Euphrates: From foraging to farming at Abu Hureyra. Oxford University Press, Oxford
45. Morand, O. (2002). Evolution through revolutions: Growing populations and changes in modes of production, working paper. Department of Economics, University of Connecticut.
46. National Research Council. (2002). Abrupt climate change. Washington, D.C.: National Research Council Committee on Abrupt Climate Change.
47. Nesbitt M. (2002) When and where did domesticated cereals first occur in southwest Asia?. In: Cappers R., Bottema S., Baruch U. (eds) The transition from foraging to farming in Southwest Asia. Ex orient, Berlin, pp 113-132
48. Olsson, O. (2001). The rise of Neolithic agriculture, working paper in economics 57. Department of Economics, Goteborg University.
49. Piperno, D. R., Moreno, J. E., Iriarte, J., Holst, I., Lachniet, M., Jones, J. G., Ranere, A. J., & Castanzo, R. (2007). Late Pleistocene and Holocene environmental history of the Iguala Valley, Central Balsas watershed of Mexico. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, online edition, available at www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/ pnas.0703442104.
50. Pryor F. (1983) Causal theories about the origins of agriculture. Research in Economic History, 8: 93-124
51. Pryor F. (1986) The adoption of agriculture: Some theoretical and empirical evidence. American Anthropologist, 88(4): 879-897. doi: 10.1525/aa.1986.88.4.02a00060
52. Pryor, F. (2004). From foraging to farming: The so-called "Neolithic Revolution". In Alexander J. Field (Ed.), Research in Economic History (Vol. 22, pp. 1-41). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.
53. Putterman L. (2008) Agriculture, diffusion and development: Ripple effects of the Neolithic revolution. Economica, 75: 729-748. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-0335.2007.00652.x
54. Richerson P.J., Boyd R., Bettinger R.L. (2001) Was agriculture impossible during the Pleistocene but mandatory during the Holocene? A climate change hypothesis. American Antiquity, 66(3): 387-411. doi: 10.2307/2694241
55. Sandweiss D.H., Maasch K.A., Anderson D.G. (1999) Transitions in the mid-Holocene. Science, 283(January 22): 499-500
56. Smith B.D. (1998) The emergence of agriculture. Scientific American Library, New York
57. Smith B.D. (2001) Documenting plant domestication: The consilience of biological and archaeological approaches. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 98(4): 1324-1326
58. Tanno K.-i., Wilcox G. (2006) How fast was wild wheat domesticated?. Science, 311(March 31): 1886
59. Weisdorf J.L. (2005) From foraging to farming: Explaining the Neolithic revolution. Journal of Economic Surveys, 19(4): 561-586. doi: 10.1111/ j.0950-0804.2005.00259.x
60. Weiss E., Kislev M.E., Harmann A. (2006) Autonomous cultivation before domestication. Science 312(June 16): 1608-1610
61. Weiss E., Wetterstrom W., Nadel D., Bar-Yosef O., Smith B.D. (2004) The broad spectrum revisited: Evidence from plant remains. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 101(26): 9551-9555
62. Wolff E. et al (2004) Eight glacial cycles from an Antarctic ice core. Nature, 429(June 10): 623-628
63. Wright H.E. Jr., Thorpe J. (2003) Climatic change and the origin of agriculture in the Near East. In: Mackay A.W., Battarbee R.W., Birks H.J., Oldfield F. (eds) Global change in the Holocene. Hodder Arnold, London, pp 49-62