| Description |
xvi, 346 pages : illustrations, maps ; 25 cm |
| 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. |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 311-331) and index. |
| 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. |
| Subject |
Fishing -- History.
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Fishers -- History.
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Fish trade -- History.
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Fishing -- Anthropological aspects.
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Civilization -- History.
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| ISBN |
9780300215342 (hardcover ;) (alk. paper) |
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0300215347 (hardcover ;) (alk. paper) |
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