History of Agriculture
From WikiDemocracy
The History of Agriculture
Agriculture began independently in different parts of the globe, and included a diverse range of taxa. At least eleven separate regions of the Old and New World were involved as independent centers of origin. The development of agriculture about 12,000 years ago changed the way humans lived. They switched from nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyles to permanent settlements and farming. Wild grains were collected and eaten from at least 104,000 years ago. However, domestication did not occur until much later. The earliest evidence of small-scale cultivation of edible grasses is from around 21,000 BC with the Ohalo II people on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. By around 9500 BC, the eight Neolithic founder crops – emmer wheat, einkorn wheat, hulled barley, peas, lentils, bitter vetch, chickpeas, and flax – were cultivated in the Levant. Rye may have been cultivated earlier, but this claim remains controversial. Regardless, rye's spread from Southwest Asia to the Atlantic was independent of the Neolithic founder crop package. Rice was domesticated in China by 6200 BC with earliest known cultivation from 5700 BC, followed by mung, soy and azuki beans. Rice was also independently domesticated in West Africa and cultivated by 1000 BC. Pigs were domesticated in Mesopotamia around 11,000 years ago, followed by sheep. Cattle were domesticated from the wild aurochs in the areas of modern Turkey and India around 8500 BC. Camels were domesticated late, perhaps around 3000 BC.
Neolithic Revolution
The Neolithic Revolution, also known as the First Agricultural Revolution, was the wide-scale transition of many human cultures during the Neolithic period in Afro-Eurasia from a lifestyle of hunting and gathering to one of agriculture and settlement, making an increasingly large population possible.[1] These settled communities permitted humans to observe and experiment with plants, learning how they grew and developed.[2] This new knowledge led to the domestication of plants into crops.[2][3]
The Development of Agriculture
The Farming Revolution
Taking root around 12,000 years ago, agriculture triggered such a change in society and the way in which people lived that its development has been dubbed the “Neolithic Revolution.” Traditional hunter-gatherer lifestyles, followed by humans since their evolution, were swept aside in favor of permanent settlements and a reliable food supply.
History of Agriculture
Agriculture, the cultivation of food and goods through farming, produces the vast majority of the world’s food supply. It is thought to have been practiced sporadically for the past 13,000 years,1 and widely established for only 7,000 years.2 In the long view of human history, this is just a flash in the pan compared to the nearly 200,000 years our ancestors spent gathering, hunting, and scavenging in the wild. During its brief history, agriculture has radically transformed human societies and fueled a global population that has grown from 4 million to 7 billion since 10,000 BCE, and is still growing.3
Domestication and early agriculture in the Mediterranean Basin: Origins, diffusion, and impact
by Melinda A. Zeder 19/8/08 PNAS
The past decade has witnessed a quantum leap in our understanding of the origins, diffusion, and impact of early agriculture in the Mediterranean Basin. In large measure these advances are attributable to new methods for documenting domestication in plants and animals.
Domestication and early agriculture in the Mediterranean Basin: Origins, diffusion, and impact
by Melinda A. Zeder 12/8/08 NIH
The past decade has witnessed a quantum leap in our understanding of the origins, diffusion, and impact of early agriculture in the Mediterranean Basin. In large measure these advances are attributable to new methods for documenting domestication in plants and animals. The initial steps toward plant and animal domestication in the Eastern Mediterranean can now be pushed back to the 12th millennium cal B.P.
origins of agriculture
origins of agriculture, the active production of useful plants or animals in ecosystems that have been created by people. Agriculture has often been conceptualized narrowly, in terms of specific combinations of activities and organisms—wet-rice production in Asia, wheat farming in Europe, cattle ranching in the Americas, and the like—but a more holistic perspective holds that humans are environmental engineers who disrupt terrestrial habitats in specific ways.
The Origins of Agriculture
Before the agricultural revolution (10,000–12,000 years ago), hunting and gathering was, universally, our species’ way of life. It sustained humanity in a multitude of environments for 200,000 years—95 percent of human history. Why did our ancestors abandon their traditional way of life to pursue agriculture?
How agriculture and domestication began
by George Ordish 30/9/25 Britannica
Agriculture has no single, simple origin. A wide variety of plants and animals have been independently domesticated at different times and in numerous places. The first agriculture appears to have developed at the closing of the last Pleistocene glacial period, or Ice Age (about 11,700 years ago).
A Western Reversal Since the Neolithic? The Long-Run Impact of Early Agriculture
by Cambridge University Press 20/1/20
In this article we document a reversal of fortune within the Western agricultural core, showing that regions which made early transition to Neolithic agriculture are now poorer than regions that made the transition later. The finding contrasts recent influential works emphasizing the beneficial role of early transition. Using data from a large number of carbon-dated Neolithic sites throughout the Western agricultural area, we determine approximate transition dates for about 60 countries, 280 medium-sized regions, and 1,400 small regions.
Unearthing the origins of agriculture
As the last great ice sheets were retreating and the Pleistocene Epoch was ending, humanity began an epic journey. For hundreds of thousands of years, our ancestors had survived by hunting animals and gathering edible wild plants. But starting about 11,700 years ago, people began to use wild plants in ways that changed the plants themselves, a process called domestication. People also began to alter their environments as they cultivated those plants. The result was the profound landscape and cultural transformation we know as agriculture.
Early agriculture and crop transmission among Bronze Age mobile pastoralists of Central Eurasia
by Robert Spengler 22/5/14 NIH
Archaeological research in Central Eurasia is exposing unprecedented scales of trans-regional interaction and technology transfer between East Asia and southwest Asia deep into the prehistoric past. This article presents a new archaeobotanical analysis from pastoralist campsites in the mountain and desert regions of Central Eurasia that documents the oldest known evidence for domesticated grains and farming among seasonally mobile herders.
Early agriculture and crop transitions at Kakapel Rockshelter in the Lake Victoria region of eastern Africa
by Steven T. Goldstein 10/7/24 THE ROYAL SOCIETY
The histories of African crops remain poorly understood despite their contemporary importance. Integration of crops from western, eastern and northern Africa probably first occurred in the Great Lakes Region of eastern Africa; however, little is known about when and how these agricultural systems coalesced.
Advances in Understanding Early Agriculture in Japan
by THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS JOURNALS
Six episodes—the Jomon, Yayoi, Tohoku Yayoi, Satsumon and Ainu, Okhotsk, and Gusuku—of agricultural development are examined. These events involve both indigenous adaptations as well as migration and diffusion to and within the Japanese archipelago. All but Jomon subsistence adaptations began as a result of migration and diffusion.
12 - Early agriculture in China
by Xinyi Liu ,Dorian Q. Fuller and Martin Jones 5/5/15 CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
To the north arena of Chinese agriculture, the Central Plain is flanked by the Gobi desert and beyond that a belt of steppe that continues westwards across Eurasia. In Western Asia early crops were processed for a flour-focused food system. While grinding stones were used in prehistoric China, boiling and steaming of grains and other foods appear to have been and remained the predominant East Asian methods for preparing foods.
Agricultural History
by Tamara J. Levi 1/2/24 DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Agricultural studies of the Mississippian peoples and the population center of Cahokia have focused heavily on the adoption and spread of maize. Gale J. Fritz seeks to shift this focus to other crops domesticated in mid-continent North America that predate the adoption of corn (maize) and that remained important staple crops.
=====The onset, dispersal and crop preferences of early agriculture in the Japanese archipelago as derived from seed impressions in pottery Author links open overlay panel===== by Eiko Endo , Christian Leipe 20/6/22 ScienceDirect
This paper summarises the results of 225 studies of seed impressions in pottery assemblages from 182 archaeological sites across Kyushu, Shikoku and Honshu islands covering the Late/Final Jomon–Middle Yayoi period (ca. 2000–1 BCE). Focussing on rice, foxtail millet and broomcorn millet impressions, this archaeobotanical dataset was used to reconstruct when and where these crops arrived from the Eurasian mainland on these islands, how they dispersed and whether there were changes in crop preferences over time.
=====Early agriculture and palaeoenvironmental history in the North of the Iberian Peninsula: a multi-proxy analysis of the Monte Areo mire (Asturias, Spain) Author links open overlay panel===== by Lourdes López-Merino 8/10 ScienceDirect
A multi-proxy study (pollen and NPPs, geochemical composition and radiocarbon dating), combined with principal components analysis, was applied to a core sampled in the Monte Areo mire (Asturias, N Spain), which covers the last 11,600 years cal BP. Both signals of Holocene climate change and transformations by human activities were recorded.
=====Climate-driven early agricultural origins and development in the Nile Delta, Egypt Author links open overlay panel===== by Xiaoshuang Zhao 12/21 ScienceDirect
Long-standing arguments regarding the early cultural transition, the domestication of plants and the impacts of climate change on past Egyptian societies remain contentious. In this paper, we demonstrate that grazing started at our study site, Kom El-Khilgan in the NE Nile Delta, ca. 7000 years ago, which was several hundred years prior to crop farming.
Where Did Agriculture Begin? Oh Boy, It's Complicated
by Rhitu Chatterjee 15/7/16 npr
First, they grew wild varieties of crops like peas, lentils and barley and herded wild animals like goats and wild oxen. Centuries later, they switched to farming full time, breeding both animals and plants, creating new varieties and breeds. Eventually, they migrated outward, spreading farming to parts of Europe and Asia.
20 - Early agriculture in the Americas
by Deborah M. Pearsall 5/5/15 CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Seasonal environments, especially forests and forest fringes, were key habitats for domestication in the Americas. Based on available data, plant domestication in the Americas was characterized by multiple, independent domestications of species in useful genera in North, Central, and South America. This chapter considers this pattern for pseudocereals, legumes, chiles, squashes, tobacco, cotton and a number of fruit trees. Plants needed for nutritionally balanced meals were domesticated multiple times in diverse settings.
Feeding the pyramid builders: Early agriculture at Giza in Egypt
by Hader Sheisha 15/7/23 ScienceDirect
While the exact technical processes employed in the construction of the pyramids are still a subject of ongoing debate, it is widely recognized that the Giza Plateau served as a hub where various trades converged with the common objective of building the necropolis.
Early Agriculture
After the United States government allowed settlers into Iowa in 1833, stories about the new land spread rapidly. Thousands of farmers streamed westward.
10 - Early agriculture in South Asia
This chapter summarizes the archaeological evidence for the Neolithic and early food production across South Asia, with a focus on four major macro-regions with distinct chronological sequences, crop ecologies and cultural traditions. The four macro-regions are given by the northwest, including the greater Indus valley, the Gangetic plains, eastern India and savanna India.
Domesticated animals and biodiversity: Early agriculture at the gates of Europe and long-term ecological consequences
by Sarah B. McClure 12/13 ScienceDirect
The human effects that dominate current ecological and climatic regimes have deep roots. The origins and spread of farming during the Holocene are increasingly viewed as a turning point for human–environmental interaction, health, nutrition, disease, and increasing social complexity.
Wild and domesticated forms of rice (Oryza sp.) in early agriculture at Qingpu, lower Yangtze, China: evidence from phytoliths
by Freea Itzstein-Davey 12/07 ScienceDirect
Rice cultivation in parts of the Yangtze valley, eastern China, is thought to date to at least the early Holocene. Using phytolith analysis, sediments from an exposed profile at Qingpu in the lower Yangtze were examined in detail in order to contribute to the growing body of information relating to the history of rice agriculture in the Yangtze delta area.
Tracing the Origin and Spread of Agriculture in Europe
by Ron Pinhasi 29/11/05 PLOS Biology
The origins of early farming and its spread to Europe have been the subject of major interest for some time. The main controversy today is over the nature of the Neolithic transition in Europe: the extent to which the spread was, for the most part, indigenous and animated by imitation (cultural diffusion) or else was driven by an influx of dispersing populations (demic diffusion). We analyze the spatiotemporal dynamics of the transition using radiocarbon dates from 735 early Neolithic sites in Europe, the Near East, and Anatolia.
