Nov 23, 2024
OHIO University Undergraduate Catalog 2020-21

ANTH 3600 - Origins of Food Production


This course explores the origins of plant and animal domestication cross-culturally, focusing on the similarities and differences between different cultures as they adopted food production as a subsistence strategy. The course also considers the effects of farming on human health, human social organization, and global ecology and environment.

Requisites: ANTH 1010 or 2020
Credit Hours: 3
General Education Code: 2NS
Repeat/Retake Information: May be retaken two times excluding withdrawals, but only last course taken counts.
Lecture/Lab Hours: 3.0 lecture
Grades: Eligible Grades: A-F,WP,WF,WN,FN,AU,I
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will be able to critically assess and contextualize the positive and negative consequences of food production as a primary subsistence method utilized by contemporary humans.
  • Students will be able to describe and analyze similarities and differences between various independent centers of food production throughout the world.
  • Students will be able to describe how the adoption of food production by humans has led to modern environmental and social problems and evaluate potential solutions.
  • Students will be able to describe the biological, cultural, and environmental circumstances that led to human domestication of plants and animals.
  • Students will be able to discuss the differences between natural selection and artificial selection, and explain the process of plant/animal domestication within the broader scope of Darwinian Evolution.
  • Students will be able to distinguish domesticated species of various animal and plant from their wild ancestors based upon morphological traits.
  • Students will be able to explain changes in human diet, beginning with our early hominin ancestors, and cite theoretical models that attempt to explain these changes.


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