[PDF] Trees Grasses And Crops People And Plants In Sub Saharan Africa And Beyond eBook

Author : Barbara Eichhorn
Publisher :
Page : 430 pages
File Size : 42,98 MB
Release : 2019
Category :
ISBN : 9783774942219

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In 2019, Prof. Dr. Katharina Neumann had been head of the workgroup on African Archaeobotany at the Institute for Archaeological Sciences, Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main for 25 years. In honor of this anniversary and to commemorate the achievements made and inspired by Katharina in the field of African Archaeobotany, the editors ? two long-time colleagues ? have compiled this Festschrift. The title ?Trees, Grasses and Crops ? People and Plants in Sub-Saharan Africa and Beyond? refers to both the plant groups Katharina has been particularly interested in throughout her academic career and the centerpiece of her research, the correlation between people and plants. Human actions such as food procurement, plant cultivation and domestication affect single plant species as well as plant communities. Together with the environment, they constitute a dynamic network of conditions and consequences. Different ways of life and different modes of subsistence have influenced past environments throughout Africa and beyond to varying degrees. This volume demonstrates the multiplicity of these aspects in more than 25 contributions: possibilities of wild plant food procurement in various regions of the continent and beyond, pre-domestication cultivation and agricultural transitions, questions of different modes of plant cultivation, paleoƯƯenvironƯƯmental reconstructions, exploitation and changes of past and present environments, whether by anthropogenic and/or climatic drivers. The papers comprise the academic fields of archaeobotany, archaeology, botany, and geography and represent a wide range of methods applied in the fields, such as analyses of phytoliths, pollen, seeds and wood charcoal as well as geomorphological forms, soil profiles, rock engravings, and many more.

Author :
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 341 pages
File Size : 48,22 MB
Release : 2021-11-22
Category : History
ISBN : 9004500227

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This book explores important chapters of past and recent African history from a multidisciplinary perspective. It covers an extensive time range from the evolution of early humans to the complex cultural and genetic diversity of modern-day populations in Africa. Through a comprehensive list of chapters, the book focuses on different time-periods, geographic regions and cultural and biological aspects of human diversity across the continent. Each chapter summarises current knowledge with perspectives from a varied set of international researchers from diverse areas of expertise. The book provides a valuable resource for scholars interested in evolutionary history and human diversity in Africa. Contributors are Shaun Aron, Ananyo Choudhury, Bernard Clist, Cesar Fortes-Lima, Rosa Fregel, Jackson S. Kimambo, Faye Lander , Marlize Lombard, Fidelis T. Masao, Ezekia Mtetwa, Gilbert Pwiti, Michèle Ramsay, Thembi Russell, Carina Schlebusch, Dhriti Sengupta, Plan Shenjere-Nyabezi, Mário Vicente.

Author : R.T.J. Cappers
Publisher : Barkhuis
Page : 496 pages
File Size : 24,26 MB
Release : 2021-04-28
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9493194396

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This handbook is a completely revised version of the first edition, which was published in 2012. Plant palaeoecologists use data from plant fossils and plant subfossils to reconstruct ecosystems and food economies of the past. This book deals with the study of subfossil plant material retrieved from archaeological excavations and cores dated to the Late Glacial and the Holocene. One of the main objectives of this book is to describe the processes that underlie the formation of the archaeobotanical archive and the ultimate composition of the archaeobotanical record - being the data that are sampled and identified from this immense archive.

Author : National Research Council
Publisher : National Academies Press
Page : 405 pages
File Size : 14,78 MB
Release : 1996-02-14
Category : Technology & Engineering
ISBN : 0309176891

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Scenes of starvation have drawn the world's attention to Africa's agricultural and environmental crisis. Some observers question whether this continent can ever hope to feed its growing population. Yet there is an overlooked food resource in sub-Saharan Africa that has vast potential: native food plants. When experts were asked to nominate African food plants for inclusion in a new book, a list of 30 species grew quickly to hundreds. All in all, Africa has more than 2,000 native grains and fruitsâ€""lost" species due for rediscovery and exploitation. This volume focuses on native cereals, including: African rice, reserved until recently as a luxury food for religious rituals. Finger millet, neglected internationally although it is a staple for millions. Fonio (acha), probably the oldest African cereal and sometimes called "hungry rice." Pearl millet, a widely used grain that still holds great untapped potential. Sorghum, with prospects for making the twenty-first century the "century of sorghum." Tef, in many ways ideal but only now enjoying budding commercial production. Other cultivated and wild grains. This readable and engaging book dispels myths, often based on Western bias, about the nutritional value, flavor, and yield of these African grains. Designed as a tool for economic development, the volume is organized with increasing levels of detail to meet the needs of both lay and professional readers. The authors present the available information on where and how each grain is grown, harvested, and processed, and they list its benefits and limitations as a food source. The authors describe "next steps" for increasing the use of each grain, outline research needs, and address issues in building commercial production. Sidebars cover such interesting points as the potential use of gene mapping and other "high-tech" agricultural techniques on these grains. This fact-filled volume will be of great interest to agricultural experts, entrepreneurs, researchers, and individuals concerned about restoring food production, environmental health, and economic opportunity in sub-Saharan Africa. Selection, Newbridge Garden Book Club

Author : Orijemie, Emuobosa Akpor
Publisher : IGI Global
Page : 418 pages
File Size : 20,52 MB
Release : 2024-08-27
Category : Nature
ISBN : 166847803X

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Africa's environmental history and the complex interactions between humans and their environment remain poorly understood, creating a significant knowledge gap in this crucial field of study. Despite Africa's vital role in human evolution, biodiversity, and agricultural expansion, the long-term impact of environmental changes on African landscapes, vegetation communities, and human cultures lacks comprehensive research. This knowledge gap hampers efforts to tackle urgent challenges like climate change, global food production, resource management, and evidence-based policy formulation. Palynology and Human Ecology of Africa, edited by Emuobosa Orijemie and Sylvester Obigba, fills this void by bringing together experts from various disciplines such as archaeology, anthropology, palaeoecology, and palynology. This groundbreaking book offers a practical and theoretical framework for understanding Africa's environmental history and the intricate relationships between humans and their environment. It serves as a compendium of knowledge, providing empirical findings and exploring the application of palynology and innovative technologies in studying human ecology in Africa. By shedding light on topics like environmental changes, vegetation dynamics, human culture, and technological innovations, the book equips readers with valuable insights into the dynamics of the environment and their impact on the people of Africa. It becomes an indispensable resource for students, researchers, and professionals in the fields of human ecology, palaeoecology, and palynology, offering essential tools to address pressing environmental challenges and formulate evidence-based policies. With its multidisciplinary approach and evidence-driven insights, this book paves the way for a sustainable future rooted in a profound understanding of human-environment interactions in Africa and beyond.

Author : Amanuel Beyin
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 2194 pages
File Size : 46,60 MB
Release : 2023-08-17
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 3031202902

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This handbook showcases an Africa-wide compendium of Stone Age archaeological sites and methodological advances that have improved our understanding of hominin lifeways and biogeography in the continent. The focal time spans the Pleistocene Epoch (c. 2.5 million–11,700 years ago) during which important human traits, such as obligate bipedalism that freed the hands to engage in creative activities, a large brain relative to body size, language, and social complexity, developed in the general forms that they are found today. The handbook is the first of its kind, and it is expected to play a significant role in human evolutionary research by: ❖ Collating the African Stone Age record, which exists in a fragmented state along the lines of national boundaries and colonial experiences. ❖ Showcasing emerging conceptual and methodological advances in African Pleistocene archaeology. ❖ Providing reference datasets for teaching and researching African prehistory. ❖ Making Africa’s Stone Age record accessible to researchers and students based in Africa who may not have access to journal publications where most new field discoveries are published. The Handbook features 128 chapters, of which 116 are site entries grouped by the host countries and presented in an alphabetical order. A number of those site-related entries examine multiple archaeological localities lumped under specific projects or study areas. The rest of the contributions deal with methodological topics, such as luminescence and radiocarbon dating, field data recovery, lithic analysis, micromorphology, and hominin fossil and zooarchaeological records of Pleistocene Africa. The introductory chapter provides an historical overview of the development of Stone Age (Paleolithic) archaeology in Africa beginning in the mid-19th century, and paleoenvironmental and chronological frameworks commonly used to structure the continent’s Pleistocene record. By making a good amount of African Stone Age literature accessible to researchers and the public, we wish to promote interest in human evolutionary research in the continent and elsewhere.

Author : Ted R Schultz
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 339 pages
File Size : 44,64 MB
Release : 2022-02-15
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0262367564

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Contributors explore common elements in the evolutionary histories of both human and insect agriculture resulting from convergent evolution. During the past 12,000 years, agriculture originated in humans as many as twenty-three times, and during the past 65 million years, agriculture also originated in nonhuman animals at least twenty times and in insects at least fifteen times. It is much more likely that these independent origins represent similar solutions to the challenge of growing food than that they are due purely to chance. This volume seeks to identify common elements in the evolutionary histories of both human and insect agriculture that are the results of convergent evolution. The goal is to create a new, synthetic field that characterizes, quantifies, and empirically documents the evolutionary and ecological mechanisms that drive both human and nonhuman agriculture. The contributors report on the results of quantitative analyses comparing human and nonhuman agriculture; discuss evolutionary conflicts of interest between and among farmers and cultivars and how they interfere with efficiencies of agricultural symbiosis; describe in detail agriculture in termites, ambrosia beetles, and ants; and consider patterns of evolutionary convergence in different aspects of agriculture, comparing fungal parasites of ant agriculture with fungal parasites of human agriculture, analyzing the effects of agriculture on human anatomy, and tracing the similarities and differences between the evolution of agriculture in humans and in a single, relatively well-studied insect group, fungus-farming ants.

Author : Patrick Roberts
Publisher : Basic Books
Page : 389 pages
File Size : 35,93 MB
Release : 2021-09-14
Category : Science
ISBN : 154160010X

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"A bold, ambitious and truly wonderful history of the world"—Peter Wohlleben, author of The Hidden Life of Trees From the age of dinosaurs to the first human cities, a groundbreaking new history of the planet that tropical forests made. To many of us, tropical forests are the domain of movies and novels. These dense, primordial wildernesses are beautiful to picture, but irrelevant to our lives. Jungle tells a different story. Archaeologist Patrick Roberts argues that tropical forests have shaped nearly every aspect of life on earth. They made the planet habitable, enabled the rise of dinosaurs and mammals, and spread flowering plants around the globe. New evidence also shows that humans evolved in jungles, developing agriculture and infrastructure unlike anything found elsewhere. Humanity’s fate is tied to the fate of tropical forests, and by understanding how earlier societies managed these habitats, we can learn to live more sustainably and equitably today. Blending cutting-edge research and incisive social commentary, Jungle is a bold new vision of who we are and where we come from.

Author : Paul Sidwell
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Page : 1261 pages
File Size : 35,81 MB
Release : 2021-08-23
Category : Foreign Language Study
ISBN : 311055612X

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The handbook will offer a survey of the field of linguistics in the early 21st century for the Southeast Asian Linguistic Area. The last half century has seen a great increase in work on language contact, work in genetic, theoretical, and descriptive linguistics, and since the 1990s especially documentation of endangered languages. The book will provide an account of work in these areas, focusing on the achievements of SEAsian linguistics, as well as the challenges and unresolved issues, and provide a survey of the relevant major publications and other available resources. We will address: Survey of the languages of the area, organized along genetic lines, with discussion of relevant political and cultural background issues Theoretical/descriptive and typological issues Genetic classification and historical linguistics Areal and contact linguistics Other areas of interest such as sociolinguistics, semantics, writing systems, etc. Resources (major monographs and monograph series, dictionaries, journals, electronic data bases, etc.) Grammar sketches of languages representative of the genetic and structural diversity of the region.