aaditya3625/ethnicties_cultivate

Here, I have mapped all the ethnicties in continental Africa to the agricultural suitability towards the five main cereals. Cereal production across the Sahel and Sub-Saharan belt is a strong predictor of level of state centralisation and forms one of the essential foundation for the growth of states after the neo-lithic transition # Murdock ethnicities to FAO agricultural suitability data mapping # Overview Here, I have mapped all the ethnicties in continental Africa to the agricultural suitability towards the five main cereals. Cereal production across the Sahel and Sub-Saharan belt is a strong predictor of level of state centralisation and forms one of the essential foundation for the growth of states after the neo-lithic transition # Methodology The mapping process employed is similar to Alesina et al. "On the Origins of Gender Roles: Women and the Plough". First, I identify the geo-climatic suitability of finely defined locations for growing the main cereal crops as defined by James C Scott in his book, "Agaisnt the Grain" (namely: wheat, barley, rice, sorghum, foxtail millet, and pearl millet). I then intersect this with geographical information on ethnic boundaries from the Murdock Ethnographic Atlas. And then I calculate a weighted average of the individual agro-suitabilities of each crop with the area of intersections as the weights. FAO rasters were first polygonised and then intersected with ethncities shapefile (provided by Nunn here: nathannunn.arts.ubc.ca) A simple weighted average was performed after the inetsections. Do files available upon request. # License and Citation This mapping does not claim ownership of the Murdock or the FAO datasets. If you use FAO data in your research, please cite: gaez.fao.org For the ethnic shapefile, please find the relevant paper (The Slave Trade and the Origins of Mistrust in Africa by Nunn and Wantchekon) on Dr. Nunn's website: nathannunn.arts.ubc.ca