Encyclopedia of society and culture in the ancient world ( PDFDrive ) 870

numbers and counting: introduction ciety At one site, Danger Cave in Utah, millstones used for grinding grain, seeds, and nuts, along with some of the earliest basketry in North America, have been excavated The Cochise culture (ca 7000–200 b.c.e.), which evolved out of the Desert culture, hunted and trapped small mammals (deer, antelope, and rabbits) as well as small reptiles (snakes and lizards) The people migrated with the seasons, inhabiting the desert floor in the winter and higher elevations (mesas) in the summer They also gathered wild plants, such as yuccas, prickly pears, junipers, and piñons Some archaeologists believe that the first evidence of the cultivation of maize (corn) north of Mexico occurred in this region around 3500 b.c.e This may have been a result of contact with Mesoamerican cultures to the south In the early part of the Archaic Period in South America the mastodon, prehistoric horse, and ground sloth species died out, and hunters shifted to deer, camelids (such as llamas and alpacas), guanacos, guinea pigs, and other small mammals Coastal sites began to exploit marine resources (fish and shellfish), especially after 5000 b.c.e Maize was first cultivated in the Peruvian highlands around 3500 b.c.e and a shift to agricultural and agropastoral subsistence became widespread in South America by 2000 b.c.e The emergence of ceramics, another indicator of sedentary non-nomadic existence, occurred at roughly the same time, around 1800 b.c.e It is likely that the llama and alpaca were domesticated around 3000 b.c.e In the late Archaic Period and afterward, hunting on the high plains of mountain regions in South America combined with domestication of camelids resulted in a system of regular migration (transhumant nomadism) between different altitudes, from the valleys in the wet, summer season to higher elevations in the dry, winter season See also agriculture; art, cities; climate and geography; clothing and footwear; economy; employment and labor; family; festivals; food and diet; gender structures and roles; hunting, fishing, and gathering; language; literature; migration and population movements; military; mining, quarrying, and salt making; natural disasters; religion and cosmology; roads and bridges; settlement patterns; social organization; storage and preservation; towns and villages; trade and exchange; war and conquest FURTHER READING L Bartosiewicz and H Greenfield, eds., Transhumant Pastoralism in Southern Europe (Budapest, Hungary: Archaeolingua, 1999) Ofer Bar-Yosef and Anatoly Khazanov, eds., Pastoralism in the Levant: Archaeological Materials in Anthropological Perspectives (Madison, Wisc.: Prehistory Press, 1992) Barbara Bender, Farming in Prehistory: From Hunter-gatherer to Food-producer (London: J Baker, 1975) J L Bintliff, Natural Environment and Human Settlement in Prehistoric Greece (Oxford, U.K.: British Archaeological Reports, 1977) 797 Juliet Clutton-Brock, ed., The Walking Larder: Patterns of Domestication, Pastoralism, and Predation (London: Unwin-Hyman, 1989) Roger Cribb, Nomads in Archaeology (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1991) Rada Dyson-Hudson and Neville Dyson-Hudson, “Nomadic Pastoralism,” Annual Review of Anthropology (1980): 15–61 George C Frison, Prehistoric Hunters of the High Plains (New York: Academic Press, 1978) Daniel H Garrison, ed., Horace: Epodes and Odes, vol 10 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991) Anatoly M Khazanov, Nomads and the Outside World, trans Julia Crookenden, 2nd ed (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994) Henri Lhote, “When the Sahara Was Green.” In The World’s Last Mysteries (Pleasantville, N.Y.: Reader’s Digest Association, 1978) Richard MacNeish, “Food-Gathering and Incipient Agriculture Stage in Prehistoric Middle America.” In Handbook of Middle American Indians: Archaeology of Northern Mesoamerica, vol 1, eds Gordon F Eckholm and Ignacio Bernal (Austin, Tex.: University of Austin Press, 1971) James L Newman, The Peopling of Africa: A Geographic Interpretation (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1995) Karim Sadr, The Development of Nomadism in Ancient Northeast Africa (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991) C R Whittaker, ed., Pastoral Economies in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1988) ▶ numbers and counting introduction Systems of numbers and counting emerged and developed at different times throughout the ancient world The earliest, most advanced systems came from Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley of India In contrast, numbers and counting were much slower to develop in ancient Europe In most cases, the ancients were not interested in developing complex systems of mathematics to solve abstract problems Counting and numbers arose as a way to help people solve practical, dayto-day problems Thus, counting was typically synonymous with measurement The ancients needed to take accurate measurements of, for example, fields and tillable ground in order to assign land to farmers, particularly in areas of the world where boundaries could change because of flooding, as in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia They also needed to calculate the volume of crops or the number of bricks needed for a construction project Linear measurements were needed for such activities as constructing buildings, and some cultures, such as the Mesoamericans and the Mesopotamians, developed fairly sophisticated forms of geometry for this purpose The ancients lacked sophisticated tools for making these kinds of measurements and for fixing consistent units of measurement Accordingly, they often turned to the physical world, including their own bodies, to devise units of measurement A