Chap. 6

Front 1

Cultural adaptation

Back 1

A complex of ideas, activities, and technologies that enable people to survive and even thrive

Front 2

Ecosystem

Back 2

A system, or a functioning whole, composed of both the natural environment and all the organisms living within it.

Front 3

Cultural evolution

Back 3

Culture change over time; not to be confused with progess

Front 4

Progess

Back 4

The notion taht humans are moving forward to a better, more advanced stage in their cultural development toward perfection

Front 5

Convergent evolution

Back 5

In cultural evolution, the development of similar cultural adaptations to similar environmental conditions by different peoples with different ancestral cultures.

Front 6

Parallel evolution

Back 6

In cultural evolution, the development of similar cultural adaptations to similar environmental conditions by peoples whose ancestral culrures ere already somewhat alike

Front 7

Culture area

Back 7

A geographic region in which a number of societies follow similar patterns of life.

Front 8

Culture core

Back 8

Cultural features that are fundamental in the society's way of making its living--including food-producing techniques, knowlege, of availabe resources, and work arrangements involved in applying those techniques to the local environment.

Front 9

Food foraging

Back 9

Hunting, fishing, gathering wild plant foods.

Front 10

Carrying capacity

Back 10

The number of people that the available resources can support at a given level of food-getting techiques.

Front 11

Neolithic

Back 11

The New Stone Age; preheistoric period beginning about 10,000 years ago in which peoples possessed stone-based technologies and depended on deomesticated plants and or animals.

Front 12

Neolithic transition

Back 12

The profound culture change beginning about 10,000 years ago and associared with the early domestications of plants and animals, and settlement in permanent villages. Sometimes refferred o as Neolithic revolution.

Front 13

Horticulture

Back 13

The cultivation of crops carried out with simple hand tools such as diggin sticks or hoes.

Front 14

Slash-and-burn-cultivation

Back 14

An extensive form of horticulture in which the natural vegetation is cut, the slash is subsequently burned, and crops are then planted among the ashes; also known as swidden farming.

Front 15

Agriculture

Back 15

The cultivation of food plants in soil prepared and maintained for crop production. Involves using technologies other than hand tools, such as irrigation, fertilizers, and the wooden or metal plow puled by harness draft animals.

Front 16

Pastoralism

Back 16

Breeding and managing large herds of domesticated grazing animals, such as goats, sheep, cattle, horses, or camels.

Front 17

Peasant

Back 17

A rural cultivator whose surpluses are transferred to a dominant group of rulers that uses the surpluses both to underwire its own standard of living and to distibute the remainder to groups in society that do not farm but must be fed for their specific goods and services in turn.

Front 18

Agribusiness

Back 18

Large-scale business involved in food production, including farming, contract farming, spped supply, seed supply, agrichemicals, farm machinery, distribution, processing, and marketing. Also known as corporate farming, it stands in contrast to smaller family-owned farms.