Reading Questions
#
1. Summarize the introduction
2. What made maize attractive to
man as a farming crop?
3. Explain the impact of mutations
on maize, wheat and rice.
Page Answer (In complete paragraphs and sentences)
ix, xii, The introduction of a book serves one job: to give the readers
some context for the book they are about to read, and to
manipulate the readers mindset so that they may go on to
read the book the way the author intended it to be read. Tom
Standage does just that in this introduction, encouraging
readers to look at history as a series of transformations
caused, enabled, or influenced by food. Using well-known
historical examples such as the Revolutionary War he
highlights the often overlooked role food played in the
outcome; leaving readers with realizations that might have
otherwise gone un-pondered upon. Standage then goes on to
explain all that the book would cover: the intersections
between food history and world history, and the ways In
which food has been the hand which forged the metal brick of
humanity into the shining sword it is today. In short, Standage
aims to ask one simple question: Which foods have done the
most to shape the modern world, and how? leaving the
reader eager for more.
3,5, As Standage states, Maize appears to be a gift from nature;
it even comes wrapped up. And being a human creation
makes maize, originally teosinte, no less of a gift to humanity;
in many ways it is the perfect crop. Tall, easy to pluck stalks
are a model of efficiency when it comes to feeding hundreds
of hungry mouths, and their easy to eat nutrition-packed
kernels are larger than those of other cereals. Not to mention
maize has a leafy husk which acts as a shield against a
farmers worst enemy, pests and moisture.
5,7, The impact of mutations on maize, wheat and rice share a
9,11, common characteristic; It makes all three ultimately incapable
of surviving on their own in the wild, domesticating them. In
maize, mutations can affect the height of an ear, the size of
the glumes (exposing the kernels), and how close to the
ground maize grows meaning the kernels were more
nutritious. Rice was breed to possess taller and larger plants
often times with secondary branches and larger grains to
increase yield. Wheat and rice are both cereal grains, and the
main feature which separates their wild and domesticated
designs is that the domesticated version is shatterproof.
This means that the grains will not fly off of the rachis
whenever the wind blows or it is touched. This is highly
inconvenient for humans who wish to farm them, and so
plants were selected which had a certain genetic mutation
that did not allow the rachis to become brittle preventing the
grains from flying off when it shatters. A mutation in wheat

4. Explain how early civilizations
tied crops to their creation stories.
5. Analyze the statement that the
adoption of farmingwas the worst
mistake in the history of the human
race. Use the book to explain your
answer.
6. Describe the reasons for
the shift from hunting and
gathering to farming.
PRAISE
causes the hard glumes that cover each grain to separate
more easily, making it easier for farmers to separate the
edible grains. In each of these crops, the less desirable of the
traits would have been passed over in favor of the bigger
better mutated crops. This helped to proliferate the desired
mutations, making farming more efficient and with the help of
these three domesticated crops lay the foundation of
civilization.
14, Crops were regarded as sacred by many early civilizations, so
15, it only makes sense to use the things that literally fuel life to
help explain the start of it.
16,17, Speaking on a short term basis, the invention of farming
domesticated crops left people worse off than they previously
were, making the statement in question true. Leaving their
hunter-gatherer lifestyle for farming meant leaving their free
time behind as well. The !King Bushmen of the Kalahari, for
example, typically spend twelve to nineteen hours a week
collecting food, while the farmers are over in the fields
busting their britches. The health benefits a surplus of food
provides is quickly negated by the fact that many
Proto-farmers suffered from malnutrition; following the
concept of a staple crop farmers diets lacked the nutritional
diversity of a hunter-gatherers. Evidence of this lays in
archaeological excavations which concluded that shortly after
the change in lifestyle the average human height decreased
in farming communities.
Before the invention of farming most of humanity were
Hunter-Gatherers. That is, they hunted animals and
gathered wild plants for their sustenance. These small clans
lived a simple life, feeding off the world around them as they
went about their laid-back lifestyle. However, they could not
stay in one area for too long less they deplete all its
resources, so they adapted: They lived in small clans or
tribes, and followed the migration of animals and the seasonal
growth of edible plants, ensuring a supply of food wherever
they made camp. Hunter-gatherers had been planting small
crops in certain frequented areas to ensure sufficient supply
upon their return. As groups became more sedentary -staying
or living in one place instead of moving to different places-
more and more children were being born, and the hunter-
gatherer no longer produced enough food to support the
growing population. With those factors in mind, the transition
to farming seemed like a no-brainer: a sedentary life allowed
them to establishment of civilizations on what used to be
temporary camp grounds, and adopting an agricultural society
provided a surplus of food to feed that growth. Previous

7. Give specific examples of how
farmers spread out, taking their
knowledge with them.
success with basic ecosystem manipulation gave the new
farmers the experience they needed in order to make the shift
from hunting-gathering to farming. Although it is important to
note that at no point did anyone make a conscious decision
to adopt an entirely new lifestyle. As I mentioned earlier
humans just adapted their lifestyle in a way that made sense
at the time based on the environment- whereas the change to
an agricultural society was simply the outcome of many
adaptations over a period of time.
22,23 Even today, many thousands of years later, the distribution of
human languages and genes continues to reflect the advent
of farming. The impact the spread of farming had on the
world is overwhelming in everyday life. Often unappreciated,
farmers made an enormous amount of cultural contributions
to the world, such as the languages we speak and the
foods we eat. The question is not what aspects of agriculture
spread, but how did farming spread from just a few parts of
the world to the entirety of it? Historians pose two debated
upon processes: Demic diffusion in which farmers
themselves are said to have spread out, and cultural
diffusion where the knowledge of farming was spilled onto
the world like a cup of milk unto the ground, spreading into
other territories and infusing itself into the existing culture.
The former is supported by evidence from many parts of the
world, such as farmers from China introducing rice agriculture
to Japan starting in around 300 B.C. The distribution of
language was a welcomed side effect of the diffusion of
agriculture. Today, nearly 90 percent of the worlds
population speaks a language belonging to one of the seven
language families that had their origins in two agricultural
homelands: The Fertile Crescent and parts of China. Yet it Is
also possible cultural diffusion could have taken place in
locations such as Europe, where several archaeological sites
found evidence of farmers and hunter-gatherers living side by
side and trading goods. This coexisting is entirely plausible,
the two different lifestyle do not compete with one another,
wouldnt have fought over land, and each had things the other
didnt making them a trading match made in heaven.
Eventually the hunter-gatherers either were forced to move
on, joined farming communities, or learned the trade of
farming themselves.
So it seems the answer to our puzzle comes in the form of a
hybrid process: a migrant farming population spread into
Europe and was gradually diluted by intermarriage, so that
the resulting population ended up being descended from both
groups. The spread of farming from its agricultural

8. Analyze the statement that
farming has done more to change
the world, and has had a great
impact on the environment, than
any other human activity, using the
book to support your answer
Part 2: FOOD AND SOCIAL STRUCTURE
1. Describe how the stratification of 32,33 After the Age of Agriculture, for the first time ever there was a
society was made possible and how
it transformed the nature of human
existence.
homelands combined with the rapid growth of farming
communities meant that the farmers outnumbered the hunter-
gatherers within a few thousand years. By 2000 B.C., the
majority of humanity had taken up farming.
25,27, During domestication, plants were genetically reconfigured
by humans; and as agriculture was adopted humans were
genetically refigured by plants.
The domestication of crops was an unprecedented feat of
genetic engineering. By planting crops and propagating those
with desirable traits, humans created an entirely new species,
one which would not exist without our intervention. Similarly,
the invention of farming and the adoption of agricultural
societies made it possible for civilization to evolve into life as
we know it. When the fundamental shift from hunting and
gathering to farming began the earths population was quite
small- estimated 5-10 million people- and had been relatively
stable for the last 2 million years due to the hazardous nature
of the hunter-gathering lifestyle. Beginning with the Age of
Agriculture, however, humans began to prosper, and
population began to grow dramatically. The surplus of farmed
food was able to accommodate for the sudden swell in the
population. The age of agriculture and beyond facilitated
many significant changes which historians attribute to the
development of civilization.
more or less constant surplus of food- extra food other people
can eat as they do other things rather than farming. As normal
as it might seem to us, the concept of people spending their
days doing different things was entirely new and made possible
by agriculture. And with different professions came how society
viewed those professions, AKA social stratification. And now
food = power because whoever had control on the food decided
where it would go, now a small group of elites had the power to
do all kinds of new things: Wage wars, build temples, pyramids,
and support the production of elaborate craft items by specialist
sculptors, weavers and metal workers. One entity controlled
the destiny of the civilization, using food as a tool to structure
and give shape to society as well as lay down the next stepping
stone towards civilization. Soon social stratification, made
possible by agriculture became present in every part of the world
with farming.
2. Explain why people had
previously regarded the
accumulation of food and power to
be so dangerous and destabilizing
and why this eventually changed.
3. Compare the relationship of
hunter-gatherer bands, food and
other hunter-gatherer bands.
35,36, All Hunter-gather clans had one thing in common: equality.
34, Almost all hunter gatherer clans value sharing, and within
them exists a social pressure to share. Sharing even extends
to the dinner table. Especially in modern hunter-gathering
bands theres an obligation to share ones food with everyone-
this helps even the food supply out as well as provide
insurance on days when nobody else caught anything. In the
same selfless fashion claiming patches of land (and its
associated food resources) is not allowed. If two band
members were to get into an argument over who owned a
spot of land it might split the band up- and when a band
consists of 7-15 people ones hopes of surviving much longer
after the break up is slim at best. There are no classes or
ranks, since everything is shared amongst the clan everyone
simultaneously owns nothing and everything- theres no way
to get a leg-up on another member. Hunter-gatherers were
also weary of bragging and an attempt to put another in debt.
So every time a great hunter comes back with a prize kill they
tease hi, calling his catch tiny and in the process bruising his
ego. It is not meant to be offensive, the hunter is always in on
the joke, and is required to take it as such. All of the
aforementioned measures are in place to prevent precisely
what agriculture started- social stratification and one man
regarding himself as superior. The !Kung has developed their
strict egalitarianism ,which can be regarded as a social
technology, developed to ensure social harmony and a
reliable supply of food for everyone. Was their world perfect?
No. But It was clear that their society was run strictly on food
supply- and the fact that food in the wild is scarce and hard to
come by. So when agriculture came along, the world flipped
upside down on itself. Suddenly there was the ability to stock
up on food, to accumulate a stash and to strive to join the
ranks of the rich (and by extent powerful). For the first time
not only was humanity accepting a ranking system of inferior
and superior, they were encouraging an accumulation of
wealth and power.
Hunter-gatherer bands were groups of people that depended
primarily on wild foods for subsistence. This meant that their
life was run by where the food was, and wasnt at any given
time. Environments with an abundance of food is rare, and
most foraging groups must move whenever the local supply of
food begins to be exhausted. In these cases possessions are
limited to what can be carried from one camp to another. This
nomadic lifestyle means women are less likely to have
multiple children, as they become an extra weight to drag the
whole clan down.
4. Explain how powerful leaders d other of the elites activities.
emerged and how they ended up in
control of the agricultural surplus
and maintained power. Use 3
examples from the book.
6. Explain how the modern world is Wealth is largely determined by ones access to food, and in
still connected to food. that way food is very much still intertwined with currency and
value in the modern world.
Part 3: GLOBAL HIGHWAYS OF FOOD
1. Analyze the impact of spices on Religion spread through trade routes so everyone spoke the
trade, geography, and the spread of same language
religion.
2. Describe the role that spices At first people were told to eat spices and medicinal herbs
played with the plague. that they prevented against the plague, but soon it became
clear that spice trading ships were in large part responsible
for the spread of the plague.
3. Explain how spices influenced Battles were fought over control of the spice trade, especially
European exploration and colonial by the Portuguese, in the end people grew bored of spices,
empires, giving specific examples there was no mystery shrouding their origins anymore- one of
from the book. the main selling points, people grew tired of over-spiced food
as well, and because of this spices greatly decreased In
value..
Part 4: FOOD, ENERGY AND INDUSTRIALIZATION
1. Explain the role that botany
played in the search for new plants.
2. Summarize the spread of sugar
cane and its role in the world
events.
3. Trace the role of the potato in
society and its impact on population
size, government and economic
policies.

Part 6: FOOD, POPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT

1. Explain the importance of
Nitrogen and Ammonia to
agriculture.
2. Explain how and why dwarf
varieties became so popular and
productive.
3. What is the Green Revolution?
4. Analyze the impact of the Green
Revolution on world economies and
population.
5. Describe the problems with the
Green Revolution. How might a
second Green Revolution improve
on those problems?
6. Summarize the Epilogue.
OVERALL EVALUATION
1. What do you think of Standages
approach to history? Is this a useful
way to think about history? What
other approaches might one take?
2. Did you like this book? Why or
why not?