Species Diversity and the Adoption of Agriculture
Presented by:
Boris Gershman
Department of Economics
American University
Thursday, December 10, 2020
3:45 pm-5:00 pm
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This paper investigates the role of species diversity in the adoption and spread of agriculture. Using high-resolution geo-referenced data on the distribution of terrestrial animal species around the world, we show that in a global sample of preindustrial societies from the Ethnographic Atlas, there is a robust inverted-U relationship between species richness and historical reliance on agriculture for subsistence. Our exploration of the channels behind this finding reveals that, among foragers, species diversity is non-monotonically related to both proto agricultural technology and elements of proto agricultural "lifestyle" such as sedentism and the presence of resource ownership claims. This evidence is consistent with a simple model integrating the insights from competing theories linking the abundance and diversity of food sources in a local environment to the expansion of diet breadth among foragers and the eventual adoption of agriculture.