Domestic Animals Are the Key to Growth of Technology

Recently in Humanities class, we watch part of a movie based on a book called "Guns, Germs, & Steel." We learned a lot about what the people lived like about 13 thousand years ago, and what they did about their blockage. First of all, the people had to travel with the seasons. Meaning that in winter, they went south, like birds. They also had to follow wherever the game went, so that they were able to continue feeding themselves and the others in their group. They traveled in small groups, probably so that there would be less mouths to feed, but enough that there were many to hunt and track an animal. They would live in caves, for weeks or months at a time.

Once the people realized their problem, they converted from hunting daily or weekly to gathering. No one really knows how long it took the people to successfully turn their hunting moving life of hunting into a permeant house for gathering.

One of the foods that the people ate was sago, a tree. They would cut at the surface of the tree and get to the pulp at the center. This was their "food." The only problems were that sago didn't produce enough calories to sustain a healthy lifestyle, and was very low on protein. It also could not be stored, so they had to gather in small amounts so that it would not go bad. One of the only good things about eating sago versus hunting is that even though it was physically harder, it ended much more successfully.

The people must have realized their problem, but what was the answer? Finally, some one found cereals, like barley and grain. They had a profound impact on some one's health, and was able to be stored for years, meaning less work in the cold months of winter.

Another way that the people went around their problem, was by raising domestic animals. Especially animals like goats. Their milk was good for protein, their fur for making clothes warmer, and their meat for eating when food was scarce. 

There are some places where domestic animals never helped to inhabitants. Such as Papa New Guinea. Their diet was very bad, and was low on protean. So to solve this problem, they some times resorted to eating giant spiders! Because there were no animals of burden, the people spent their time finding and gathering food. 

Domestic animals helped in ways that are amazing other than meat, fur, and milk, some animals are strong enough to carry a yolk to help with the field work. When they helped with the work, people didn't need to work as hard for what they needed, providing more free time for people to develop special talents for certain things. Such as weaving, metal work, or stone work. People even started designing and decorating their own houses. 

This shows that having animals help you advance with the production of good, healthy food, assisted the growth of specialties and tools, which could also be called technology.