Read the following scenario and answer the questions below. Early People and Agricultural Beginnings Long ago, two sisters were
talking as they returned from their morning trip to collect mushrooms, seeds, berries, and green leaves for the day's meals. The younger woman was watching the progress of a small rabbit as it hopped across the path and toward the clan's trash midden (refuse heap), where broken tools (made of bone, stone, or shell) were tossed, and where discarded food was thrown. She noticed the rabbit stop and begin nibbling at the many new, green shoots sprouting across one side of the midden. She walked over to look, and she saw that some of last year's discarded dried fruits were growing. Surprised and interested, she called her sister over to discuss this find. The next step in this story would likely be that this woman and her sister ________. a. began to seek out old middens to find and eat the things growing there
b. began to save, sort, and name different types of seeds
c. started a full-scale garden, digging the soil and enriching it with food wastes
d. began to deliberately plant seeds near their village to make food gathering easier in the future
e. began to trade seeds with people from other villages
It is most likely that the sisters would go seek out old middens because they would associate the presence of middens with food sources. It is possible that they would not have made the connection between seeds and new plants, because if that were so they would begin taking economic advantage of the seeds. They may have supposed that for some strange reason or cycle the middens produced food after have been inactive for a certain amount of time.
