Agricultural Origins and Dispersals: The Domestication of Animals and Foodstuffs

Born in Missouri and educated at the University of Chicago, Carl Sauer led a varied professional life. Among other things, he was a teacher, did fieldwork in geography and other subjects, and worked for such corporations as Rand McNally. Sauer believed that, because human beings have an enormous and far-reaching impact on Earth, the study of history and other disciplines would serve to enhance people's geographic understanding. For this reason, he studied such diverse subjects as archaeology and sociology. He was especially interested in the origins of agriculture and in whether the earliest crops bred and grown were seed or root crops. Sauer is credited with the development and modernization of geographical field resource techniques. Together with Wellington Jones, he provided geographers in the midwestern United States with the tools they needed to observe and map the physical and cultural aspects of that region. These techniques came to be used successfully in such projects as the Tennessee Valley Authority. Sauer was also interested in the American Southwest and in Mexico and produced works on those areas. One of the most notable of these was Pueblo Sites in Southeastern Arizona (1930).