Neolithic Revolution

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The Neolithic Revolution is the term for the first agricultural revolution, describing the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture, as first adopted by various independent prehistoric human societies, in various locations. The term refers to both the general time period over which these initial developments took place and the subsequent changes to Neolithic human societies which either resulted from, or are associated with, the adoption of early farming techniques and crop cultivation. The first agricultural revolution spurred major social changes, including an increasing population density, the organization of a hierarchical society, specialization in non-agricultural crafts, standing armys, barter and trade, and the expansion of human "control" over nature.

Contents 1 Agricultural transition 1.1 Incentive to settle 1.2 Zones of Crop Domestication 1.3 Emergence of civilization 2 Domestication of plants 2.1 Agriculture in Asia 2.2 Agriculture in the Fertile Crescent 2.3 Agriculture in Africa 3 Domestication of animals 3.1 Domestication of animals in the Middle East 3.2 Domestication of animals in China's Yellow River valley 4 Causes of the Neolithic Revolution 5 Consequences of the Neolithic Revolution 5.1 Social change 5.2 Disease 5.3 Subsequent revolutions 5.4 The Age of Discovery 6 See also 7 References 8 Further reading

The hunter-gatherer way of life was replaced by domestication of crops and animals, enabling people to live more sedentary lives. Permanent settlements arose, creating new social, cultural, economic, and political institutions. At first, agriculture was usually subsistence agriculture: people farmed for their own subsistence (not for sale or profit), and farmers practiced crop rotation (letting fields lie fallow between planting seasons). The need to leave fields in fallow sometimes lead to shifting cultivation, discouraging a strongly fixed sedentary lifestyle. Slash and burn methods of agriculture were closely linked to shifting cultivation, especially on the frontiers of agriculture where fire not only cleared the land for crops but could act as a temporary fertilizer. Similarly, the domestication of grazing animals like sheep and goat encouraged the use of fire to convert forest land into pasture.^[1]

The Neolithic Revolution is notable primarily for developments in social organization and technology. The changes most often associated with the Neolithic Revolution include an increased tendency to live in permanent or semi-permanent settlements, a corresponding reduction in nomadic lifestyles, the concept of land ownership, modifications to the natural environment, the ability to sustain higher population densities, an increased reliance on vegetable and cereal foods in the total diet, alterations to social hierarchies, nascent "trading economies" using surplus production from increasing crop yields, and the development of new technologies. The relationship of these characteristics to the onset of agriculture, to each other, their sequence and even whether some of these changes are supported by the available evidence remains the subject of much academic debate, and seems to vary from place to place.

[edit] Agricultural transition

The term Neolithic Revolution was first coined in the 1920s by Vere Gordon Childe to describe the first in a series of agricultural revolutions to have occurred in Middle Eastern history. This period is described as a "revolution" to denote its importance, and the great significance and degree of change brought about to the communities in which these practices were gradually adopted and refined.

This involved a gradual transition from a hunter-gatherer mode of subsistence which was practiced by all earlier human societies, to one based more upon the deliberate nurturing and cultivation of crops for the purpose of food production. Evidence for the first beginnings of this process obtained from different regions dated from approximately 25,000 years ago in Melanesia to 2,500 BC in Sub-Saharan Africa, with some considering the events of 9000-7000 BC in the Fertile Crescent to be the most important. This transition everywhere seems associated with a change from a largely nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle to a more settled, agrarian-based one, with the onset of the domestication of plants and of a number of animals. The chronology, social foundations, plant genetics, plant morphology and selective mechanisms of humans, and the processes of the spread of agriculture have been documented by archaeologists in many parts of the world where agriculture first arose (e.g. Melanesia, the "Fertile Crescent", Mesoamerica, South Asia, India (the Ganges), Southeast Asia, Peru, the Mississippi, and the Yuan in China).

[edit] Incentive to settle

Hunter-gatherer lifestyles are the product of the depletion of the biological potential of a specific location, either through localised overhunting or over gathering, and lead to a movement to a new area where game and foodstuffs are not depleted, allowing the earlier ranges to recover. If sufficient foodstuffs can be gathered on a permanent basis from a specific locality, there is little incentive to move and permanent settlement may result. This will happen whenever local biological productivity is sufficient to permit permanent settlement. Prehistorically it appears to have happened first with certain beachcomber or lacustrine cultures, such as the Jomon of Japan, the areas of Sundaland and Sahulland of "Greater Melanesia", and historically in the salmon country of the Pacific Northwest region of North America. Natufian sedentism before the Younger Dryas was proto-agricultural in nature, principally around gathering, but not planting crops.

Having a plentiful supply of basic food does not mean that depletion of important gathered vegetable products does not occur. But a settled population permits year-round observation of the growing cycle, and hunter-gatherers are keen observers of the environmental conditions optimal for specific plant products. Research in Australia, with Aboriginal groups in the Australian Northern Territory has shown that they were fully conversant with the biological facts of agriculture even though they never farmed, although, when found, may have been transferred to a more favourable location. Research has shown that only certain crops make good cultivars. In fact most cultivated crops were discovered more than 2,500 years ago, and despite the scientific and technological revolutions, only a few marginal nut crops (e.g. macadamia nuts) have been added in recent times.

Table 1. The worlds's 30 leading crops in terms of estimated edible dry matter

FOOD CROP	Production (mill.tonnes) Crop	Plant Type	Original Ecosystem	Pollination and Polyploidy
Wheat	468	Annual	Mediterranean	Self 2,4,6
Maize	429	Annual	Savanna	Cross 2
Rice	330	Annual	Savanna, Tropical forest	Self 2
Barley	160	Annual	Mediterranean	Self 2
Soybean	88	Annual	Woodlands	Self 4
Cane Sugar	67	Perennial	Tropical forest	C (veg. prop) many
Sorghum	60	Annual	Savanna, Steppe	Self 2
Potato	54	Annual	Highlands	C (veg. prop) 2,4,6
Oats	43	Annual	Mediterranean	Self 2,4,6
Cassava	41	Perennial	Savanna, Tropical Forest	? 4
Sweet Potato	35	Annual	Savanna	C (veg. prop) 6
Beet Sugar	34	Annual	Coastal	Cross 2,a,4
Rye	29	Annual	Mediterranean, Steppe	Cross 2
Millets	26	Annual	Savanna, Steppe	S/C 2,4
Rapeseed	19	Annual	Mediterranean	Cross 4,6
Beans	14	Annual	Savanna	Self 2
Peanut	13	Annual	Savanna	Self 4
Pea	12	Annual	Mediterranean	Self 2
Musa (bananas, plantain)	11	Perennial	Tropical forest	Vegetative 3
Grape	11	Perennial	Woodlands	- 2
Sunflower	9.7	Annual	Prairie	Cross 2
Yams	6.3	Annual	Tropical forest, Savanna	- many
Apple	5.5	Perennial	Woodlands	C (veg. prop) 2
Coconut	5.3	Perennial	Coastal	Cross 2
Cottonseed (oil)	4.8	Annual	Savanna	Cross 4
Oranges, citrus fruits	4.4	Perennial	Tropical forest	C (veg. prop) 2,3
Tomato	3.3	Annual	Coastal	Self 2
Cabbage	3.0	Annual	Coastal	Cross 2
Onion	2.6	Annual	Mediterranean	Cross 2
Mango	1.8	Perennial	Tropical forest	C (veg. prop) 2

[edit] Zones of Crop Domestication

The Russian agronomist Nikolai Vavilov suggested that the wild ancestors of these and other domesticated crops were found only in different regions of the world.

1. Mediterranean climate areas of the Middle East - Wheat, barley, oats, rye, grapes, apples, onions, lentils, vetch, garlic, chickpeas, dates, fig, pomegranate, pistachio
2. Loess region of Northern China - Japanese millet, buckwheat, soyabean, apricot, peach, plum, cherry, apple
3. Monsoon forests from Southern China to Bangladesh - Rice, oranges & citrus, pigeon pea, yams, water chestnut, star fruit, durian, lychee
4. Tropical rain forests of New Guinea and adjacent regions - Bread-fruit, banana, plantain, mango, sago, coconuts, taro, sugar cane, pit-pit
5. Ethiopia, the Sudan and the Sahel - Teff, sesame, ensete, sorghum, coffee, pearl millet, Guinea millet, African rice, okra, watermelons, oil palm, cottonseed
6. Mesoamerica (Mexico and Central America) Maize, beans, capsicum, chili, tomatoes, cocoa, squash, sweet potato
7. Andes (Ecuador to Northern Chile) - Potato, cotton and peanuts
8. Central America and Amazonia - Amaranth, cassava, pineapple
9. Mississippi Prairie - Sunflower seeds

Carl Sauer (1952), a geographer whose book "Agricultural Origins and Dispersals" has become a classic, combined the Darwinian views with Eduard Hahn's idea (1896, 1909) that vegetative propagation (crops having lost capacity for seed production, or growing in an environment where seeds were not needed) should precede grain agriculture, and set out to locate the cradle of agriculture on theoretical grounds. He listed 6 presuppositions as a basis for his search:

1. Agriculture did not originate from a growing or chronic shortage of food. People living in the shadow of famine do not have the means or time to undertake the slow and leisurely steps out of which a better and different food supply is to develop in a somewhat distant future.
2. The hearths of domestication are to be sought in areas of marked diversity of plants and animals... This implies well-diversified terrain and perhaps also variety of local micro climates.
3. Primitive cultivators could not establish themselves in large river valleys subject to lengthy floods and requiring protective dams, drainage, or irrigation.
4. Agriculture would begin in wooded but not heavily forested lands. Primitive cultivators could readily use open spaces for planting by deadening trees; they could not dig in sod or eradicate vigorous stoloniferous grasses...
5. The inventors of agriculture had previously acquired special skills in other directions that predisposed them to agricultural experimentation.
6. Above all, the founders of agriculture were sedentary folk.

The sedentary life, he thought, should therefore precede agriculture and could best be developed by fishing tribes, and for his purpose he sought them on fresh waters in a warm climate. Fresh water was selected because seaside vegetation has contributed relatively little to agriculture and what has been developed has come late in crop evolution. With these presuppositions in mind, he proposed that the monsoon forests of Southeast Asia would be the oldest hearth of agriculture. Adopting a diffusionist approach, he suggested that from there agriculture spread to the Indian subcontinent, and Southern China and then to the Middle East and Europe. He proposed an independent origin for American crops, but left open the possibility for influences from across the Pacific from South East Asia.

Stephen Pyne, in contrast, argues that early agriculture and pastorialism typically involved a fire-fallow cycle that encouraged shifting agriculture and migrations. In his model, argiculture and animals herding typically preceded the sedentary lifestyle.

Archaeology, concentrated in Europe and the Middle East suggested that Middle Eastern farming took place significantly later to that of Europe, where farming tended to be largely if not exclusively, of grain crops and plants originating in the wetter Mediterranean climate and mountain foothill areas of the Middle East. As a result a number of scholars proposed that around 12,500 years ago as the world's climates were changing, hunter-gatherers were forced to turn to alternative methods of obtaining food. Climatic changes over time forced some people to work much harder and travel longer distances in search of food. Over thousands of years, hunter-gatherers unconsciously adjusted to their surroundings. Hunter-gatherers began to stay near reliable sources of water and bring wild seeds back to their base camp to plant nearby. The Australian archaeologist Vere Gordon Childe maintained that the key factor in this change was that global climates at the end of the last ice age became warmer and drier, making plants more efficient at producing crops but encouraging settlement near water sources. But paleoclimatology and the study of sub-fossil pollen demonstrated that after the ice age climates in the region had actually turned wetter, requiring that the forces governing Childe's "Neolithic Revolution" be revised.

The primacy of agriculture in the Middle East was challenged, however, by the findings of French archaeologists in Vietnam, at the site of Hoa Binh. The Hoabinhian culture seemed to confirm Sauer's thesis. By 12,000 BC, the pre-historic people of Vietnam had abandoned its nomadic life to settle in the Hong (Red) River valley. They lived in caves and rock shelters close to water streams and were making ground oval, circular or triangular adzes with a sharp edge. At the Spirit Cave in Thailand Chester Gorman in 1965 found, the Hoabinhians were mostly hunters but they also cultivated a range of plant crops; including almond, water chestnut, broad beans, peas, cucumbers, betel nut, bottle gourd and butternut pumpkin or squash to gather their fruits, nuts or edible roots. Dated between 9000 and 6000 BC by Carbon 14 dating, this figure was later revised upwards by 3,000 years by Wilhem Solheim II of the University of Hawaii, who found cruder forms of the Hoabinh technology from 12,000 BC. Solheim claimed that the inhabitants at Spirit Cave had 'an advanced knowledge of horticulture', and his chronological chart suggests that 'incipient agriculture' began at about 20,000 BC in southeast Asia. This fact suggested to some that domestic cultivation may have existed in South East Asia earlier than in the Near East (Iraq) as many Western historians had until then believed. The finding of pottery, and polished stone tools from 6,600 BC also upset the theory that these technologies only arrived in the region about 3,000 BC from China, and suggested that perhaps the diffusion in fact went in the other direction. The Haobinhian culture also produced a waisted adze, hafted transversely, the first evidence of a hoe confirmed in the world.

[edit] Emergence of civilization

Without agriculture, the emergence of many of the traits popularly referred to as "civilization" would not have been possible (e.g. cities, advanced technology, social hierarchies, organized warfare, etc.). The documentation and interpretation of the natural and social changes associated with the origins of agriculture is one of the great success stories of archaeology (particularly environmental archaeology).

[edit] Domestication of plants

Once agriculture started gaining momentum, humans were unknowingly altering the genetic make-up of certain cereal grasses (beginning with emmer, einkorn and barley), and not simply those that would favour greater caloric returns through larger seeds. Plants that possessed traits such as small seeds, or bitter taste would have been seen as undesirable. Plants that rapidly shed their seeds on maturity tended not to be gathered at harvest, thus not stored and not seeded the following season; years of harvesting selected for strains that retained their edible seeds longer. Several plant species, the "pioneer crops" or Neolithic founder crops, were the earliest plants successfully manipulated by humans. Some of these pioneering attempts failed at first and crops were abandoned, sometimes to be taken up again and successfully domesticated thousands of years later: rye, tried and abandoned in Neolithic Anatolia, made its way to Europe as weed seeds and was successfully domesticated in Europe, thousands of years after the earliest agriculture.^[2] Wild lentils present a different challenge that needed to be overcome: most of the wild seeds do not germinate in the first year; the first evidence of lentil domestication, breaking dormancy in their first year, was found in the early Neolithic at Jerf el-Ahmar, (in modern Syria), and quickly spread south to the Netiv Hagdud site in the Jordan Valley^[3] This process of domestication allowed the founder crops to adapt and eventually become larger, more easily harvested, more dependable in storage and more useful to the human population.

Barley and, most likely, oats, were cultivated in the Jordan Valley, represented by the early Neolithic site of Gilgal, where in 2006 archaeologists found caches of seeds of each in quantities too large to be accounted for even by intensive gathering, at strata dateable c. 11000 years ago. Some of the plants tried and then abandoned during the Neolithic period in the Ancient Near East, at sites like Gilgal, were later successfully domesticated in other parts of the world.

Once early farmers perfected their agricultural techniques, their crops would yield surpluses which needed storage. Most hunter gatherers could not easily store food for long due to their migratory lifestyle, whereas those with a sedentary dwelling could store their surplus grain. Eventually granaries were developed that allowed villages to store their seeds for longer periods of time. So with more food, the population expanded and communities developed specialized workers and more advanced tools.

The process was not as linear as was once thought, but a more complicated effort, which was undertaken by different human populations in different regions.

[edit] Agriculture in Asia

The Neolithic Revolution is believed to have become widespread in southwest Asia around 8000 BC–7000 BC, though earlier individual sites have been identified. Although archaeological evidence provides scant evidence as to which of the genders performed what task in Neolithic cultures, by comparison with historical and contemporary hunter-gatherer communities it is generally supposed that hunting was typically performed by the men, whereas women had a more significant role in the gathering. By extension, it may be theorised that women were largely responsible for the observations and initial activities which began the Neolithic Revolution, insofar as the gradual selection and refinement of edible plant species was concerned.

The precise nature of these initial observations and (later) purposeful activities which would give rise to the changes in subsistence methods brought about by the Neolithic Revolution are not known; specific evidence is lacking. However, several reasonable speculations have been put forward; for example, it might be expected that the common practice of discarding food refuse in middens would result in the regrowth of plants from the discarded seeds in the (fertilizer-enriched) soils. In all likelihood, there were a number of factors which contributed to the early onset of agriculture in Neolithic human societies.

[edit] Agriculture in the Fertile Crescent

Agriculture first arose in the Fertile Crescent because of many factors. The Mediterranean climate has a long, dry season with a short period of rain, which made it suitable for small plants with large seeds, like wheat and barley. These were the most suitable for domestication because of the ease of harvest and storage and the wide availability. In addition, the domesticated plants had especially high protein content. The Fertile Crescent had a large area of varied geographical settings and altitudes. The variety given made agriculture more profitable for former hunter-gatherers. Other areas with a similar climate were less suitable for agriculture because of the lack of geographic variation within the region and the lack of availability of plants for domestication.

[edit] Agriculture in Africa

The Revolution developed independently in different parts of the world, not just in the Fertile Crescent. On the African continent, three areas have been identified as independently developing agriculture: the Ethiopian highlands, the Nile River Valley and West Africa.

Prof. Fred Wendorf and Dr. Romuald Schild, of the Department of Anthropology at Southern Methodist University, have evidence of early agriculture in Upper Paleolithic times at Wadi Kubbaniya, on the Kom Ombos plateau, of Egypt, including a mortar and pestle, grinding stones, several harvesting implements and charred wheat and barley grains - which may have been introduced from outside the region. Carbon-14 dates range from 15,000 to 16,300 BC, showing that this early grain harvesting exceeded that of the Middle East by about 5,000 years.

The archaeologists state that "These are not the only Late Paleolithic sites which have been discovered in Egypt along the Nile, nor or they alone in containing stone artifact assemblages which seem to indicate the harvesting of grain. Among others are several sites at Wadi Tushka, near Abu Simbel, at Kom Ombo, north of Aswan, and a third group [a whole series of sites] near Esna. All these are in the Nile Valley." The Egyptian Esna culture shows "extensive use of cereals," date from 13,000 to 14,500 years ago.^{[citation needed]}

They continue: "While the flaked stone industries from them are different from those found at Kubbaniya, the Tushka site yielded several pieces of stone with lustrous edges, indicating that they were used as sickles in harvesting grain."

Many such grinding stones are found with the early Egyptian Sebilian and Mechian cultures dating 10,000-13,000 BC. Smith^{[citation needed]} writes: "With the benefit of hindsight we can now see that many Late Paleolithic peoples in the Old World were poised on the brink of plant cultivation and animal husbandry as an alternative to the hunter-gatherer's way of life". Unlike the Middle East, this evidence appears as a "false dawn" to agriculture, as the sites were later abandoned, and permanent farming then was delayed until 4,500 BC with the Tasian and Badarian cultures and the arrival of crops and animals from the Near East.

[edit] Domestication of animals

When hunter-gathering began to be replaced by sedentary food production it became more profitable to keep animals close at hand. Therefore, it became necessary to bring animals permanently to their settlements, although in many cases there was a distinction between relatively sedentary farmers and nomadic herders. The animals' size, temperament, diet, mating patterns, and life span were factors in the desire and success in domesticating animals. Animals that provided milk, such as cows and goats, offered a source of protein that was renewable and therefore quite valuable. The animal’s ability as a worker (for example ploughing or towing), as well as a food source, also had to be taken into account. Besides being a direct source of food, certain animals could provide leather, wool, hides, and fertilizer. Some of the earliest domesticated animals included sheep, goats, cows, and pigs. Out of the thousands of species of animals only fourteen eventually became domesticated for agricultural purposes.

[edit] Domestication of animals in the Middle East

The Middle East served as the source for many domesticable animals, such as goats and pigs. This area was also the first region to domesticate the Dromedary Camel. The presence of these animals gave the region a large advantage in cultural and economic development. As the climate in the Middle East changed, and became drier, many of the farmers were forced to leave, taking their domesticated animals with them. It was this massive emigration from the Middle East that would later help distribute these animals to the rest of Afroeurasia.

[edit] Domestication of animals in China's Yellow River valley

The agricultural revolution was inspired, in part, by the spreading of domesticated plants and animals and the growth of complex societies. The origin of plant and animal domestication was in China’s Yellow River Valley, and the fertile crescent, before it spread in Eurasia. Since Eurasia was connected by land, and there were open trade routes in that region, it was easy for agricultural methods to be adopted by neighbouring communities. The same latitudes of the Eurasian continent meant that plants would grow well in similar climates. This way, they had a productive yield. Either the neighbouring hunter gathers adopted these new methods or they were displaced. The change to the agrarian way of life lead to more developed technology, organized society, and increased populations which required sedentary lifestyles to spread. Therefore the indigenous hunter-gatherers either adapted to this new way of life or else they gradually died off.

[edit] Causes of the Neolithic Revolution

Harlan, examining the causes for the Neolithic Revolution, suggests 6 principal reasons which can be summarised to 3 principal categories:

1. Domestication for religious reasons
2. Domestication by crowding and as a consequence of stress
3. Domestication resulting from discovery, based upon the perceptions of food gatherers

With regard to the first explanation, Ian Hodder, who directs the excavations at Çatalhöyük, has suggested that the earliest settled communities, and the Neolithic revolution they represent, actually preceded the development of agriculture. He has been developing the ideas first expressed by Jacques Cauvin, the excavator of the Natufian settlement at Mureybet in northern Syria. Hodder believes that the Neolithic revolution was the result of a revolutionary change in the human psychology, a "revolution of symbols" which led to new beliefs about the world and shared community rituals embodied in corpulent female figurines and the methodical assembly of aurochs horns.

An alternative explanation for the origin of agriculture is propounded by Mark Nathan Cohen. Cohen believes that following the widespread extinctions of large mammals in the late Palaeolithic, the human population had expanded to the limits of the available territory and a population explosion led to a food crisis. Agriculture was the only way in which it was possible to support the increasing population on the available area of land.

[edit] Consequences of the Neolithic Revolution

[edit] Social change

It is often argued that agriculture gave humans more control over their food supply, but this has been disputed by the finding that nutritional standards of Neolithic populations were generally inferior to that of hunter gatherers, and life expectancy may in fact have been shorter (see "Disease" below). In actual fact, by reducing the necessity for the carrying of children, Neolithic societies had a major impact upon the spacing of children (carrying more than one child at a time is impossible for hunter-gatherers, which leads to children being spaced four or more years apart). This increase in the birth rate was required to offset increases in death rates and required settled occupation of territory and encouraged larger social groups. These sedentary groups were able to reproduce at a faster rate due to the possibilities of sharing the raising of children in such societies. The children accounted for a denser population, and encouraged the introduction of specialization by providing diverse forms of new labour. The development of larger societies called for different means of decision making and led to governmental organization. Food surpluses made possible the development of a social elite who were not otherwise engaged in agriculture, industry or commerce, but dominated their communities by other means and monopolised decision making

[edit] Disease

Throughout the development of sedentary societies, disease spread more rapidly than it had during time in which hunter-gatherer societies existed. Inadequate sanitary practices and the domestication of animals may explain the rise in deaths and sickness during the Neolithic Revolution from disease, as diseases jumped from the animal to the human population. Some examples of diseases spread from animals to humans are influenza, smallpox, and measles.

Surprisingly, the humans who first domesticated the wild animals quickly built up immunities to the diseases. Although the humans who built up immunities to the new diseases survived their sickness, others were not so fortunate. According to historians, civilizations which had not domesticated any wild animals nor been exposed to the diseases were not immune at all and “epidemics resulted in which up to 99 percent of the ... population was killed” (92). 68o

[edit] Subsequent revolutions

Andrew Sherrat has argued that following upon the Neolithic Revolution was a second phase of discovery that he refers to as the secondary products revolution. Animals, it appears were first domesticated purely as a source of meat. The Secondary Products Revolution occurred when it was recognised that animals also provided a number of other useful products. These included:

• hides and skins (from all domesticated animals)
• manure for soil conditioning (from all domesticated animals)
• wool (from sheep, llama, alpaca and Angora goats)
• milk (from goats, cattle, yaks, sheep and even horses and camels)
• traction (from oxen, buffalo, onagers, donkeys, horses and camels)

Sherrat argues that this phase in agricultural development enabled humans to make use of the energy possibilities of their animals in new ways, and permitted permanent intensive subsistence farming and crop production, and the opening up heavier soils for farming. It also made possible nomadic pastoralism in semi arid areas, along the margins of deserts, and eventually led to the domestication of both the Baktrian and Dromedary camel. Overgrazing of these areas, particularly by herds of goats, greatly extended the areal extent of deserts.

Living in one spot would have more easily permitted the accrual of personal possessions and an attachment to certain areas of land. From such a position, it is argued, prehistoric people were able to stockpile food to survive lean times and trade unwanted surpluses with others. Once trade and a secure food supply were established, populations could grow, and society would have diversified into food producers and artisans, who could afford to develop their trade by virtue of the free time they enjoyed because of a surplus of food. The artisans, in turn, were able to develop technology such as metal weapons. Such relative complexity would have required some form of social organisation to work efficiently and so it is likely that populations which had such organisation, perhaps such as that provided by religion were better prepared and more successful. In addition, the denser populations could form and support legions of professional soldiers. Also, during this time property ownership became increasingly important to all people. Ultimately, Childe argued that this growing social complexity, all rooted in the original decision to settle, led to a second Urban Revolution in which the first cities were built.

[edit] The Age of Discovery

In his book Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond argues that Europeans and East Asians benefited from an advantageous geographical location which afforded them a head start in the Neolithic Revolution. Both shared the temperate climate ideal for the first agricultural settings, both were near a number of easily domesticable plant and animal species, and both were safer from attacks of other people than civilisations in the middle part of the eurasian continent. Being among the first to adopt agriculture and sedentary lifestyles, and neighboring other early agricultural societies with whom they could compete and trade, both Europeans and East Asians were also among the first to benefit from technologies such as firearms and steel swords. In addition, they developed resistances to infectious diseases, such as smallpox, due to their close relationship with domesticated animals. Groups of people who had not lived in proximity with other large mammals, such as the Australian Aborigines, were more vulnerable to infection.

During and after the Age of Discovery, European explorers, such as the Spanish conquistadors, encountered other groups of people which had never or only recently adopted agriculture. Due in part to their head start in the Neolithic Revolution, the Europeans were able to use their technology and endemic diseases, to which indigenous populations had never been exposed, to colonize most of the globe.

[edit] See also

• Çatalhöyük, a Neolithic site in southern Anatolia
• Natufians, a settled culture preceding agriculture
• Original affluent society
• Haplogroup G (Y-DNA)
• Haplogroup J (mtDNA)
• Agricultural Revolution

[edit] References

1. ^ The use of fire during the Neolithic Revolution from: Pyne, Stephen J. Vestal Fire: An Environmental History Told through Fire, of Europe and Europe's Encounter with the World; University of Washington Press, Seattle; 1997. ISBN 0-295-97592-3
2. ^ http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?apage=2&cid=1150355513473&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
3. ^ http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?apage=1&cid=1150355513473&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

[edit] Further reading

• Bailey, Douglass. (2000). Balkan Prehistory: Exclusions, Incorporation and Identity. Routledge Publishers. ISBN 0-415-21598-6.
• Bailey, Douglass. (2005). Prehistoric Figurines: Representation and Corporeality in the Neolithic. Routledge Publishers. ISBN 0-415-33152-8.
• Balter, Michael (2005). The Goddess and the Bull: Catalhoyuk, An Archaeological Journey to the Dawn of Civilization. New York: Free Press. ISBN 0-7432-4360-9.
• Bellwood, Peter. (2004). First Farmers: The Origins of Agricultural Societies. Blackwell Publishers. ISBN 0-631-20566-7
• Cohen, Mark Nathan (1977)The Food Crisis in Prehistory: Overpopulation and the Origins of Agriculture. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-02016-3.
• Diamond, Jared (1999). Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York: Norton Press. ISBN 0-393-31755-2.
• Diamond, Jared (2002) Evolution, Consequences and Future of Plant and Animal Domestication. Nature Magazine, Vol 418.
• Harlan, Jack R. (1992) Crops & Man: Views on Agricultural Origins ASA, CSA, Madison, WI. http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/history/lecture03/r_3-1.html
• Wright, Gary A. (1971) "Origins of Food Production in Southwestern Asia: A Survey of Ideas"

Current Anthropology, Vol. 12, No. 4/5 (Oct - Dec., 1971) , pp. 447-477