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Fishing : how the sea fed civilization / Brian Fagan.

Penn Museum Library SH421 .F34 2017
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Format:
Book
Author/Creator:
Fagan, Brian M., author.
Language:
English
Subjects (All):
Fishing--History.
Fishing.
Fishers--History.
Fishers.
Fish trade--History.
Fish trade.
Fishing--Anthropological aspects.
Civilization--History.
Civilization.
History.
Physical Description:
xvi, 346 pages : illustrations, maps ; 25 cm
Place of Publication:
New Haven : Yale University Press, [2017]
Summary:
Humanity's last major source of food from the wild, and how it enabled and shaped the growth of civilization In this history of fishing-not as sport but as sustenance-archaeologist and best-selling author Brian Fagan argues that fishing was an indispensable and often overlooked element in the growth of civilization. It sustainably provided enough food to allow cities, nations, and empires to grow, but it did so with a different emphasis. Where agriculture encouraged stability, fishing demanded movement. It frequently required a search for new and better fishing grounds; its technologies, centered on boats, facilitated movement and discovery; and fish themselves, when dried and salted, were the ideal food-lightweight, nutritious, and long-lasting-for traders, travelers, and conquering armies. This history of the long interaction of humans and seafood tours archaeological sites worldwide to show readers how fishing fed human settlement, rising social complexity, the development of cities, and ultimately the modern world.
Contents:
Bountiful waters
Beginnings
Neanderthals and moderns
Shellfish eaters
Baltic and Danube after the ice
Rope-patterned fisherfolk
The great journey revisited
Fishers on the Pacific Northwest Coast
The myth of a Garden of Eden
The Calusa : shallows and sea grass
The great fish have come in
Rations for Pharaohs
Fishing the Middle Sea
Scaly flocks
The fish eaters
The Erythraean Sea
Carp and Khmer
Anchovies and civilization
Ants of the ocean
The beef of the sea
"Inexhaustible manna"
Depletion
More in the sea?
Glossary of fishing terms.
Notes:
Includes bibliographical references (pages 311-331) and index.
ISBN:
9780300215342
0300215347
OCLC:
978291325

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