Question

Describe the transition to settled agriculture in Mesoamerica. Question 2 options:

A. Mesoamericans domesticated crops after becoming sedentary. To protect themselves from invaders, they settled into villages, developed their militaries, and then in about 1500 BCE began to develop agriculture.
B. Mesoamericans domesticated crops before becoming sedentary. They cultivated crops in mobile agricultural bands, while continuing to hunt. As they began to plant more and hunt less over a period of about 2,000 years, they transitioned to living in sedentary villages.
C. Mesoamericans transitioned to settled agriculture as they domesticated crops. Tending to domesticated crops necessitated settled agriculture. These two transitions occurred at the same time.
D. Mesoamericans practiced hunting and gathering and did not develop settled agriculture until Europeans arrived on the continent in the sixteenth century CE (1500s CE).

Answer 1

The answer is B. Mesoamericans domesticated crops before becoming sedentary. They cultivated crops in mobile agricultural bands, while continuing to hunt. As they began to plant more and hunt less over a period of about 2,000 years, they transitioned to living in sedentary villages. The Mesoamerican hunters of the late Pleistocene era led nomadic lifestyles where they relied on hunting and gathering for food. However, the nomadic lifestyle slowly transitioned into a more sedentary lifestyle as the hunting and gathering micro-bands started to cultivate wild plants providing them security by increasing the surplus of starvation foods near their camps which could be utilized when hunting was bad, or during the times of drought where the resources are low. As the Archaic period progress, the cultivation of food became so important to Mesoamerican people that eventually they established a sedentary lifestyle reliant on agriculture which allowed permanent settlements to grow into villages.