Chapter 5: History’s Haves and Have Nots
The overall point of this chapter was to figure out why some areas adopted food production at different times of other areas. Only a few areas had developed food production independently, but they had done so at very different times. Near those areas, hunter-gatherers adopted food production, while other areas did not and were replaced by invading food producers, but again, at very different times. Many people of some ecologically sound areas for food production, made no attempt to stop being hunter-gatherers, until they were swept up by modern times. The people that had a head start in food production would also be the ones that developed the guns, germs, and steel, that would replace the ones who remained hunter-gathers, or behind in the times. …show more content…
Archaeologists date food production by radiocarbon dating of carbon-containing materials at the site. So, by using this method, archaeologists can calculate a material’s carbon 14/carbon 12 ratio, to see how the carbon has decayed. However, radiocarbon has numerous technical problems, one of being you needed large amounts of carbon, so instead scientists had to resort to dating material recovered nearby. The materials that are deposited at different times can be mixed together, which isn’t really reliable enough to determine how long ago something was deposited. A second problem with the method radiocarbon, is that the carbon 14/carbon 12 ratio of the atmosphere is never constant, so it’s more based on assumptions that it is constant, which is a systematic error. Many people don’t understand archaeological literature, so dates that were actually uncalibrated, were written in books saying they were
The overall point of this chapter was to figure out why some areas adopted food production at different times of other areas. Only a few areas had developed food production independently, but they had done so at very different times. Near those areas, hunter-gatherers adopted food production, while other areas did not and were replaced by invading food producers, but again, at very different times. Many people of some ecologically sound areas for food production, made no attempt to stop being hunter-gatherers, until they were swept up by modern times. The people that had a head start in food production would also be the ones that developed the guns, germs, and steel, that would replace the ones who remained hunter-gathers, or behind in the times. …show more content…
Archaeologists date food production by radiocarbon dating of carbon-containing materials at the site. So, by using this method, archaeologists can calculate a material’s carbon 14/carbon 12 ratio, to see how the carbon has decayed. However, radiocarbon has numerous technical problems, one of being you needed large amounts of carbon, so instead scientists had to resort to dating material recovered nearby. The materials that are deposited at different times can be mixed together, which isn’t really reliable enough to determine how long ago something was deposited. A second problem with the method radiocarbon, is that the carbon 14/carbon 12 ratio of the atmosphere is never constant, so it’s more based on assumptions that it is constant, which is a systematic error. Many people don’t understand archaeological literature, so dates that were actually uncalibrated, were written in books saying they were