Living Room Lecture: GM Crops 8000 BCE

The beginnings of agriculture was one of the most critical pivot points in the 300,000-year career of our species. It set the stage for rapid shifts in human (Homo sapiens) social, economic and political systems that led us to the complex societies we live in today. In the past few decades, many archaeologists have pointed to climate change as a prime mover which led us to shift from a two-million-year tradition (in the genus Homo) of foraging and hunting to farming in the past mere 10,000 years. But what actually was the role of climate change in the beginnings of cultivation? Was it really a solitary “prime mover” of economic change? Or were there other critical contingencies? In this lecture, Prof. Arlene Rosen explores the reasons for the origins of wheat and barley agriculture in Southwest Asia using her own data from the rare plant remains collected from sites of the last Hunter/Gatherer groups in that region. This event will be held on Zoom. Cost: Pay what you wish

About the Presenter
Arlene M. Rosen is a Professor of Environmental Archaeology and Geoarchaeology in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin. She is working on human environmental relations during later prehistory and in early complex societies in the Levant, China, Mongolia, and New Mexico. She is the author of Civilizing Climate: Social Responses to Climate Change in the Ancient Near East (2007: Altamira Press), and numerous journal articles dealing with issues of human adaptations to climate change and human impact on the environment, published in issues of PNAS, PlosOne Current Anthropology, The Holocene, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, and Quaternary International, among others. She recently organized an international workshop entitled “The Anthropocene in the Longue Durée”, which has since been published as a special issue of The Holocene in October 2015.

About the San Diego Archaeological Center
The San Diego Archaeological Center is a nonprofit curation facility and museum where visitors can learn the story of how people have lived in San Diego County for the past 12,000 years. In addition to its role as a museum, the Center serves as an education and research facility and is the only local organization dedicated to the collection, study, curation and exhibition of San Diego County’s archaeological artifacts.