ShmoopTube

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[ musical accent ]

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And, here's your shmoop du jour,

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brought to you by economic models.

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Some of them are…just too thin.

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All right, the New England environment encouraged groups like the Iroquois, pictured above,

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to develop which of the following economic models?

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All right, these are the Iroquois, these guys. Buff, right here.

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All right, and here are your potential answers.

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[ whipping sound ]

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All right, a mostly mobile lifestyle.

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A mix of hu...

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Total reliance on maize...

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[ mumbles ]

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All right, well, first things first...

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What is an economic model?

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Well, because we're picturing Heidi Klum

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doing her taxes right now, uh...

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That's probably wrong.

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An economic model is really just

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the system of production and payment used by a particular group of people.

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In this case, the question wants us

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to take a look at the life of the Iroquois, these folks,

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and determine how they went about keeping their society, uh, afloat.

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[ pop ]

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Well, if we can take a quick skim over the answer choices,

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we can see that they mostly refer to food.

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Hunting-gathering, maize, fishing...

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Well, yeah, that makes sense.

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It's not like Native Americans were running down

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to their local Piggly Wiggly to buy that week's groceries with Coupons.com.

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They did their own thing.

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The question is... what was that thing,

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and how did they do it?

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Well, answer A suggests they had a mostly mobile lifestyle.

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Well, no, not really.

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Now, in the Great Basin, where it was harder to forage and whatnot,

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tribes would regularly move on once food became scarce.

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But not the Iroquois; food was plentiful all around them.

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[buzzer sounds ]

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What about C, a reliance on maize production?

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Uh, yeah, that looks fun, but we're actually referring to this type of maize...

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[ clears throat ] Sorry, that was corny. [ titters ]

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Okay, well yeah, certainly the Iroquois ate their fair share of maize,

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but they didn't have a total reliance on it,

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as choice C says.

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[ buzzer sounds ]

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Have you ever tried an all-corn diet?

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Uh, we would not recommend it.

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So, no, they must have needed something else to survive...

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What about D, traditional fishing methods?

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Well, no, most of them were inland, way too far from the coast.

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And it's very tricky to talk a fish

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into buying a train ticket to meet you in Schenectady...

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Believe us, we've tried.

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[ buzzer sounds ]

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So, our answer has to be B -

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hunting, gathering, and agriculture.

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And, yeah, the big three for these guys

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were squash, beans, and maize.

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So, they did a lot of planting...

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but they also did plenty of hunting on top of it.

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[ ding ]

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Which would have been much easier to do, uh,

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if they could have found an open field...

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Oh, well, sorry guys.

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