The human race was once completely dependent on hunting and gathering as its source for caloric intake. Today, this is not the case. We live in a society that is continuously becoming more global, and the large global population is being supported by modern food production. But what factors caused this switch to take place from hunting and gathering to food production? The main contributors over the last several thousand years include: the increase in calorie yield, the stability, and the benefits derived from domesticate-able animals that can all be attributed to food production.
To better understand how these three contributors interact with and influence one another, it is beneficial to examine Abraham Maslow’s well-known Hierarchy of Needs. According to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, there are certain aspects of an individual’s life that must be maintained before that person can begin fulfilling their higher or more complex needs. But for the purposes of this paper, we will evaluate societies as a whole instead of just focusing on individuals. The end goal in this theory is to eventually reach self-actualization and fulfillment: the state of being where creativity and innovation are able to flourish. But before a slight hope can be given to that end goal of being achieved, the Maslow’s first sets of needs must be met and maintained. These are categorized as the physiological, meaning that they represent an individual’s need for “air, water, and sufficient calories and nutrients to live.” Hunting and gathering societies and food producing societies approach fulfilling these needs in distinct ways.
Central to the very existence of a hunting and gathering society is the daily need to secure anew these physiological needs. This i...
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...le animals. These factors caused the ultimate switch for mankind to become food producers.
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People have long considered general theories of motivation, and the question regarding the specific motives that direct and energize our human behavior has undergone tremendous speculation. To this day the question still stands: what is it that humans seek most in life? In an effort to answer this question, Abraham Maslow proposed what he called the hierarchy of needs. Maslow theorizes that human beings are motivated to fulfill this hierarchy, which consists of needs ranging from those that are basic for survival up to those that promote growth and self-enhancement (Kassin 300).
Before agriculture, human populations relied heavily on the foods that they found, scavenged or hunted in their area of occupation. (Higman 2011) This form of subsistence generally led to a nutritionally balanced diet. Their diets did, on occasion, become lacking of certain nutrients because some food sources are only available seasonally. (Duncan and Scott 2004, Ingold 2002, Jochim 2012) The shift to agriculture led to substantial changes not only in subsistence but also in all other aspects of life. Agriculturalists worked harder; spending most of their day in the fields cultivating the land. This made a nomadic lifestyle, like most hunter—gatherers were accustomed to, virtually impossible. By becoming sedentary populations, humans have exposed themselves to higher instances of viruses, bacteria and parasitic diseases typically carried by the homo genus. (Stein 2010) When agriculture took hold, approximately 10,000 years ago, there was a massive shift to high carbohydrate based subsistence. Higher carbohydrate intakes combined with the added stresses of malnutrition, di...
Diamond, Jared. Guns. Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1999.
In 1954 an American psychologist Abraham Maslow proposed that all people are motivated to fulfill a hierarchical pyramid of needs. At the bottom of Maslow's pyramid are needs essential to survival, such as the needs for food, water, and sleep. The need for safety follows these physiological needs. According to Maslow, higher-level needs become important to us only after our more basic needs are satisfied. These higher needs include the need for love and 'belongingness', the need for esteem, and the need for self-actualization (In Maslow's theory, a state in which people realize their greatest potential) (All information by means of Encarta Online Encyclopedia).
This criticism may stem from the fact that Maslow fails to expand upon the difference between social and intellectual needs between those in Individualist and Collectivist societies. The Hierarchy of Needs was created from an Individualist perspective (since Maslow himself was from the United States – a highly Individualistic nation). The needs of people from Individualistic societies have a tendency to be more self-centered than those in Collectivist societies, focusing on self-improvement, with Self-Actualization being its culmination. Moreover, the order of needs in Maslow’s hierarchy, with Self-Actualization at the top is ill matched for Collectivist societies, where the need for acceptance and community invariably outweigh the need for freedom and individuality. (redwoods.edu,
Diamond, Jared M. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fate of Human Societies. New York: Norton, 1997.
Maslow believed that there was a hierarchy of five innate needs that influence people’s behaviors (Schultz & Schultz, 2013, p.246-247). In a pyramid fashion, at the base are physiological needs, followed by safety needs, then belonginess and love needs, succeeded by esteem needs, and finally the need for self-actualization. Maslow claimed that lower order needs must be at least partially satisfied before higher level needs are addressed. Furthermore, behavior is dominated by solely one need
In an agricultural society people started to farm and there were less to no hunting which changed their diets dramatically. When people were hunting and gathering they were getting a healthy and a well-balanced diet. Before agriculture people ate many various wild plants and animals therefore, they had better nutrition. For example, the Kalahari Bushmen’s daily intake was “2,140 calories and 93 grams of protein” (Diamond 2). Also when Diamond is comparing the two societies, he talks about the balance of nutrients and diet, also he states that the “Kalahari Bushmen eat a variety of 75 or so different wild plants” and receive more calories than needed. As the people switched over to agriculture, the amount of food they had become more plentiful and predictable but unhealthy. Nowadays, more people are overweight especially in the western area of the world. This proves that people before agriculture were healthy and had a decent
Diamond, Jared. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York: W. W.
In this essay I aim to identify the needs of humans and how they have been met from the early days of humanity, right through to the present day. I will be placing a lot of emphasis on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs as this is the most widely accepted model and it makes sense that humans will have progressed up this hierarchy over time, this is something I will be exploring in the essay.
Establishing an adequate supply of food is historically one of the fundamental challenges facing mankind. The modern food infrastructure employed by contemporary society is rooted in the creation and innovation of food production. Its effective utilization decreases the level of societal labor contribution required and discourages food shortage trepidation amongst individuals. It is hard to fathom given the current status of our society massive agricultural-industrial complex that the hunter-gatherer organization of society dominated for more than 99 percent of our existence (Fagan 2007: 126). The hunter-gatherer population was characterized by their primary subsistence method, which involved the direct procurement of edible plants and animals from the wild. The primary methods employed were foraging and hunting, which were conducted without any significant recourse to the domestication of either food source (Fagan 2007: 129). Food production is presumed to have emerged approximately 12,000 years ago as a system of “deliberate cultivation of cereal grasses, edible root plants, and animal domestication” (Fagan 2007: 126). The pronounced change from hunting and gathering to agriculture and domestication can be simplistically designated the Agricultural or Neolithic Revolution (Pringle 1998). The catalytic developments of the Neolithic Revolution mark a major turning point in the history of humankind. The resulting animal and plant domestication established the foundation on which modern civilization was built.
Abraham Maslow wrote the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory. This theory was based on fulfilling five basic needs: physiological, safety, social, esteem and self-actualization. Maslow believed that these needs could create internal pressures that could influence the behavior of a person. (Robbins, p.204)
Abraham Maslow did studies of the basic needs of human beings. He put these needs into a hierarchical order. This means that until the need before it has been satisfied, the following need can not be met (Encyclopedia, 2000). For example, if someone is hungry they are not thinking too much about socializing. In the order from lowest to highest the needs are psychological, safety, social, esteem, and self-actualization. The first three are classified as lower order needs and the last two are higher order (Hierarchy, 2000). Without meeting these needs workers are not going to be as productive as they could otherwise. The first three are considered to be essential to all humans at all times. The last two have been argued but are mostly considered to be very important as well.
In 1943, psychologist Abraham Maslow developed a theory of basic human needs: Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. His theory suggests that embedded in the very nature of each human being are certain needs that must be attained in order for a person to be whole physically, psychologically, and emotionally. First, there are phys...