Who discovered/invented Agriculture and the Domestication of some animals. Ancient Men or Women?

Question

At a recent discussion with a group of friends, I sustained that it was ancient women who had developed agriculture and achieved the domestication of some animals, based on:

a) Women have a superior ability and a greater amount of patience, to observe tiny details or events that pass unnoticed to men.

b) After men had killed an animal to eat, her cubs or puppies were abandoned. I am sure that women picked them up, took care of them and fed them. How? By breastfeeding them, in some cases.

I saw on TV, some time ago, a program that showed photos of women breastfeeding animals. Unfortunately, I did not tape it. Right now I was able to obtain two pictures (only) in the web on the subject.

My contention does not refer to who is superior to whom, but to investigate the possibility of my being right or wrong. Should any of the readers have a photo or knows where I can get one, I shall appreciate it very much.

Thanks in advance,

Answer 1

Actually you aren't very far off the mark. Since men were probably busy hunting most of the time they would not have had time to focus on trying to domesticate animals such as sheep or goats. While it wouldn't suprise me that it was men who had domesticated dogs (what women wants a wild wolf hanging around her baby); sheep and goats would have had to have been partially domesticated by breastfeeding them. While I am sure it was probably the men of the tribe who eventually made agriculture a major staple I doubt they were the ones who initiated it. It would not surprise me if most of the various skills like pottery and weaving were invented by women and not men.

Answer 2

Patience has nothing to do with developing agriculture, rather, it relies on being strong enough to till some earth, plant seeds, water it, and stay in the same place for year after year. It would have developed over many years, as an extension of hunting/gathering in the same locale, say, a fertile valley.



What makes you so sure that women would pick up a puppy and rear it, rather than just kill and eat that too? It would have been more tender than its mother. In a tribal or nomadic situation, a pet may be just another mouth to feed.

Domestication of wolves came about when permanent tribes had wolves following them around who ate better by eating the scraps from the tribe than they did by hunting their own. Gradually, the less aggressive ones would have become more integrated with the tribe, and would have been better fed and had more offspring than their more aggressive cousins. So you have the rise of the domestic dog. Not by adoption of abandoned orphans, as romantic as this may sound.

Answer 3

I think this is impossible to determine, especially since there is significant evidence to believe that agriculture evolved independantly in multiple places. What was done by women in one place may've been done by men in another.

Answer 4

There is just no evidence to support any of those ideas. Even if modern women are found to be breastfeeding animals, that's a long toss away from saying that's how these animals were domesticated in the past. I think your theory draws some very severe lines between the genders, lines I'm not convinced are justified. What about women who hunted? It's good you're thinking about this, but it seems that the evidence we do have either contradicts or just doesn't support your idea.

Answer 5

It is believed  that women developed agriculture, since women were the "gatherers" of the hunter/gatherer groups. They worked very closely with plants, and must have been the first to observe that seeds create new plants.

Answer 6

Really, how could we possibly know?

Your argumentation is extremely subjective.

Answer 7

I  read that agriculture (the regular farming of grains for more than one season in the same place), started at the end of the last Ice Age, appx. 10,000 years ago, when early humans observed hoofed animals eating the various grasses near bodies of freshwater. Glaciers covering much of the north, pushed both men & animals southward, and because hunting was limited by the scarcity of wild game, humans experimented with eating grains (Wheatberries, ryeberries, oatberries, corn, etc.). For diversity, our ancestors eventually invented bread, which soon let to the invention of beer. By 5,000 years ago, bread and beer for one day, became the standard wage for one day's labor...