Abi Madrid

Scarcity

A stable food source is an enduring issue because of the change from Paleolithic where man chased his food through hunting wild animals and gathering wild berries and fruits which was not certain to the Neolithic Revolution in which man learned to farm. Man became farmers and made villages and societies that groups of people could settle and live in together for farming. They settled by rivers where the land was fertile so they could have good soil to grow their crops and feed their families without having to worry about if they’re going to find a big enough animal or not. So now that man is farming he has a new set of issues to ensure a stable food supply such as controlling the water and new machines to ensure seeds will grow.

According to Walter in Civilization: Past and Present, 2010, before villages, societies, and farming the way man found his food was a much more difficult way. Man was nomadic and moved from place to place chasing their food and gathering wild berries along the way. This was not sufficient for very long because there wasn’t always a 100% chance that man would actually find food to feed his family and many people went hungry just looking for food.

Another way people innovated to end plant scarcity was by creating the Shaduf. According to Mays in Irrigation Systems, Ancient, 2014, the Shaduf is a bucket hung from a the long end of a stick, and a rock heavier than the bucket is hung from the short end. The person using it pulls the rope attached to the long end to fill the bucket then lets the rock pull the bucket out of the water. This was created to transfer water from the Nile to their crops in an easier, less time consuming way.

As the human population started increasing faster than before, the demand for a stable food source increased as well. Although the demand for a stable food source increased there still wasn’t enough crops or food for everyone to eat and they couldn’t grow crops for everyone and they couldn’t grow crops as fast as the population was growing. This led to the invention of Jethro Tull’s Seed Drill. According to How did planting seeds change in the 1700’s, this seed drill drilled holes for three rows of seed at a time to the correct depth, planted the seeds, and covered the seed all at the same time. Not only did this plant seeds faster, but it also had more crops grow because the old way was easily accessible to animals and were planted with little accuracy.

Even though scarcity is still an enduring issue people, without the people of the past innovating to make the issue less severe, people today would have a lot more hunger issues than we do now.