Hunting/gathering lifestyle vs. an agricultural lifestyle

Before the last glacial maximum of Earth around 20 000 years ago, humans were living a hunting-gathering lifestyle. Using advanced projectile weapons such as bows, arrows, and spears, coinciding with advanced intelligence and good communication skills, humans became excellent hunters. However, this lead to many of the Earth's large animals being killed off. 

This was not the only disadvantage to the hunter-gatherer lifestyle that humans used for many years.

• Finding animals to hunt and then actually killing them took lots of time and energy for humans. This meant they couldn't focus on other things that would've helped them develop eg. cultural development. 
  
  
  
• Humans couldn't carry many belongings on them because they were always on the move: everything they owned, they had to carry.
  
  

There were some advantages to this hunter-gatherer lifestyle.

• Less resources and land were required to gather food. 
  
  
• There was reduced transmission of diseases, as livestock weren't held in captivity/in close range to each other to allow for disease to spread far. 
  
  
• Since humans had to always be on the move to find animals to hunt, there was less exploitation of the resources of just one certain area, meaning there was less pressure on the species inhabiting that area.
   
• There was less reliance on just 1-2 limited food sources, they could hunt a variety of lean and fatty meats from different animals which did provide good nutrients. 
  
  

However, around that 20,000 k.y.a mark, Earth went through a significant climate change where it became warmer, forested areas and grasslands become more prominent: the region became more favourable for human living. As a result of this, they could live in one place at a time and form simple settlements. With the killing off of many large animals happening at the same time, the first evidence of agriculture appeared in this time period.

A settled, agricultural-rich lifestyle provided many advantages to humans.

• For one, less energy was required, since humans didn't have to go travelling for miles finding their prey to kill. Instead they could stay in one spot, their simple settlement, and use that energy towards other useful activities. Farming gave humans the time for reproduction, increasing populations and therefore protection from predators, and cultural development: i.e learning about farming, developing new and better techniques and technology, and sharing that knowledges with others in their settlement: role specialisation and division of labour would've started to be used for more productive farming as agriculture become more prominent. 
  
  
• Farming provided humans with a steady and high quality food supply.
  
  
• Humans no longer had to rely on 'mass kill sites' for meat, which would have often went to waste if it wasn't eaten quickly enough due to rot. They could kill exactly however many animals they needed to feed settlements at a time and not waste food.

However, changing to settled and agricultural rich lifestyles also had it's disadvantages:

• Natural disasters could wipe out entire crops at a time, meaning entire settlements could lose most or even all of their food supply. 
  
  
• Nearby settlements or other humans could easily come and steal crops and harvests.
  
  
• Lots of animals living in very close proximity to each other increased the risk of disease transmission spreading quickly through livestock.

Despite these disadvantages, agriculture was one of the greatest developments in human history because it supported large populations of people living in settlements and eventually villages and cities, lead to the technological innovation such as the invention of the wheel, plough, hoe etc, helped introduced trade, and the domestication of animals, helping humans move up and eventually dominate the food chain, and Earth itself. To this day, we rely so heavily on agriculture without even necessarily realising the full extent to which we do. 

Potatools

 

In Biology we have been learning about hominid development as part of the human evolution topic. One topic we have been focusing on recently is stone tools, which are obviously a key part of hominid adaptation and development. 

There are four main types of stone tools, increasing in complexity as time progressed:

-Oldowan tools were associated with H. Habillis around 2.7-1.7 million years ago. They were fashioned by striking two stones together 5-6 times to produce a sharp(ish) edge.

-Acheulian tools were associated with H. Erectus and H. Ergaster. These tools were more complex, fully shaped, required more planning and were often teardrop shaped. They took around 50 blows to make.

-Mousterian tools are associated with Neanderthals, produced across much of Europe, Asia and Africa around 600 000- 400 000 years ago. They were much more complex compared to oldowan tools as they required more than 150 blows. Flint was often used because it flakes in a predictable manner, making the tools easier to make and craft. It reflects on the hominid brain quickly developing and becoming more intelligent.

-Finally, upper paleolithic tools are associated with H. sapiens beginnign around 50 000 years ago. They required more than 250+ blows and are very complex, use a variety of material, and reflect on the very intelligent human brain. 

Mitochondrial DNA and Human Evolution

In 1987, geneticists Allan Wilson, Rebecca Louise Cann, and Mark Stoneking published the article "Mitochondrial DNA and Human Evolution", in which they showed that all modern, living humans can be traced back to a single woman living in Africa, approximately 100-200 000 years ago, later coined 'Mitochondrial Eve'. They found this evidence by sourcing mitochondrial DNA from 147 humans, living in vastly different areas of the world- Asia, Europe, New Guinea, Australia, Africa, from placentas. Mitochondrial DNA differs from 'regular' DNA in that it is only passed down maternally, from mother to daughter, and does not recombine during meiosis. This means it doesn't change between offspring aside from mutations- however, the geneticists found that the mutations occurred fairly consistently and were able to actually use them to their advantage, like a 'biological clock' where they could get an accurate idea of the timeline and trace the lineage of the shared mtDNA way back until they found this last common ancestor, the "Mitochondrial Eve". The "Mitochondrial DNA and Human Evolution" article suggests this single woman's bloodline or 'lineage' by chance, survived over all other lineages, was continually passed down from mother to offspring, not changing aside from mutations, and expanded all over the world to eventually be present in every single currently living human's mtDNA. 

Source:

Haskett, D. (October 10 2014). "Mitochondrial DNA and Human Evolution" (1987), by Rebecca Louise Cann, Mark Stoneking, and Allan Charles Wilson. 

Retrieved from: https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/mitochondrial-dna-and-human-evolution-1987-rebecca-louise-cann-mark-stoneking-and-allan

Art 2.3 internal (I finished my board!)

Art 2.2 internal :)

 

 

a cheeky (forced) level 2 art portfolio update

As my portfolio due date nears closer and closer I'm working towards completing the second panel on my board (technically the first). To remind you, my kaupapa this year is flowers, and I'm basing it on the artist models Vincent Van Gogh, Mimmo Paladino, Jim Dine, and Yuzuru Hashimoto, among others to likely come. 

This is my planning sheet for my second panel:

As you can see, I'm aiming to complete 7-8 big-sized artworks; made up of 3 series. One series focuses on Vincent Van Gogh's art-style- that sort of impressionist, abstract, vibrant style. My second series will focus on Yuzuru Hashimoto, so will be Japanese woodblock painting inspired. One change I have made to this planning sheet is my last series will be a realism series, for that I don't have any artist models, I am purely going off a variety of reference images to paint it as realistic as possible- this will likely be the most time-consuming series and so I will work on it last. 

The series I am currently working on is inspired by Japanese woodblock artist Yuzuru Hashimoto, who specialises in flowers and nature scenes, which obviously links into my kaupapa. This style is very out of my comfort zone and is actually quite challenging at times- it focuses a lot on clean lines, blocks of just one colour, and it takes a lot of patience. I feel as if with my usual style I can just go crazy, I don't have to really map out or take a lot of time on each artwork. But for this style I find myself having to actually take the time to complete it, which is I guess in a way good because it's teaching me new skills, new techniques, expanding my style. 

Below are some photos of my progress so far: 

Next steps: Finish this panel as soon as possible. Then I will likely move onto Vincent Van Gogh inspired-pieces. Really I just need to keep producing as much artwork as possible to ensure my portfolio gets finished but as well to have time to receive feedback from my teachers (and work on it, unlike Rheanna). 

Overall I'm proud of my progress so far. My board is a lot more put-together, connected, and includes so many more artist models and different styles compared to last year, which is definitely improving my painting skills and knowledge. Excellence here I come, hopefully :)

level 2 painting update (in lockdown!!)

 Covid-19 has blessed New Zealand with another lockdown so here comes another few weeks of trying to finish my portfolio at home, much like last year. One of many issues that comes with lockdown is a lack of proper art supplies, not having access to the art department paints and brushes I'd usually use. I do have my own supplies hanging around but I'm not wasting my expensive oil paints on my NCEA portfolio (sorry).

What I do have is watercolour, so after ordering wet-strength paper and brushes that turned out to be absolutely terrible, I've been working on a few paintings I hope to put on my portfolio. I think at school I've really been focusing on my more 'grunge' artist models - Jim Dine, Mimmo Paladino, so my goal for lockdown is to continue on the more pretty, bright paintings inspired by Van Gogh, even Marilyn Webb, etc. Remember I'm aiming for my portfolio to look like a story in sequence, going from these bright pretty flowery paintings to the way more grunge, dark, rotting flowers look: kind of representing how flowers themselves slowly die. 

This painting I am a bit reluctant to put on the final portfolio as it does look similar-ish to the reference I used, and it doesn't actually have flowers on it, only bamboo. But I really liked the style I ended up using. It's a fine-tip black pen with watercolour on top, it sort of looks Japanese inspired so I might research some Japanese artists to continue this sort of style. 

This painting I'm definitely more proud of. Again it was created using a fine-tip black pen and watercolour on top. The colours have sort of faded since I painted it so I might go over it again with a few more coats, you can hardly see the blue sky. This is definitely making its way onto my portfolio. I didn't even have an artist model for this one, I just used an assortment of reference photos of flowers and joined it all together into one. I should stop doing that.

Of course I had to go back to my favourite style of painting, the really grunge, dark, sort of abstract ways. Jim Dine is a really prominent artist model in my portfolio/inspiration pinterest board. He uses negative space and really dark colours to create really grunge works which I love. This was created using a fine-tip pen with black watercolour on top. As you can see I've used that pen to depict some little figures on there just to make the painting more interesting while still keeping the flower the focal point. I think I'll have to add a few more coats of black once this one dries because it's not as dark as I'd like it, I definitely want to add more dimension. 

My next steps are to continue creating more of the bright pieces as well as some transitional pieces (i don't want the portfolio to go directly from bright and sunny and vibrant to sudden black and dark and death pieces.) Also researching some more artist models as well as the work of my current ones just to get more ideas and references. As much as I love making really dark works I have to get the pretty ones out of the way (ugh)