cultural hearth
A cultural hearth is any place where certain related changes in land-use appeared due to human domestication of plants and animals. The term includes the predominant forms of labor used due to adoption of new tools, or surplus wealth accumulated due to natural, social or organizational advantages stemming from the taming of certain seeds, herd, or other animals.
As humans migrated over the past 60,000 years eventually they established cultural hearths that were scattered throughout Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas as centers of trade, commerce, or invention. The fertile crescent between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, which the Greeks called Mesopotamia is one such ancient cultural hearth with respect to the wheel, writing tablets, astronomy and the epic poem of Gilgamesh that found its way into the Bible as the story of Noah and the great flood.
Map of the primary centers of domestication in the world.
The places of origin and their identifiable domesticated plants and animals.
People on the move.
Human migratory patterns in prehistory with circled cultural hearths.
Asia | America | North America
Jared Diamond, Guns Germs and Steel.
Cult is the root word of cultivate and culture;
Intensity of Cultivation.
Technology index
landscape index
