History of Agriculture
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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.
Tracing the Origin and Spread of Agriculture in Europe
by Ron Pinhasi 1,✉, Joaquim Fort 2, Albert J Ammerman 3 2005 NIH
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).
The Origin and Early Spread of Agriculture in the Old World
by D. ZOHARI 1986 ScienceDirect
Definite signs of plant cultivation first appear in the Near East ‘arc’ at the second half of the 8th millennium B.C. and the 7th millennium B.C. The principal ‘founder crops’ discovered in the early Neolithic Near Eastern farming villages are: emmer wheat, einkorn wheat, barley, lentil, pea, bitter vetch, chickpea and flax.
From foraging to farming: the 10,000-year revolution
by Kharaneh shells 22/3/12 UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
The moment when the hunter-gatherers laid down their spears and began farming around 11,000 years ago is often interpreted as one of the most rapid and significant transitions in human history – the ‘Neolithic Revolution’.
Megadrought and Collapse: From Early Agriculture to Angkor
by Harvey Weiss 19/10/17 OXFORD ACADEMIC
This is the first book to treat the major examples of megadrought and societal collapse, from the late Pleistocene end of hunter–gatherer culture and origins of cultivation to the 15th century ad fall of the Khmer Empire capital at Angkor, and ranging from the Near East to South America.
Ancient agriculture in Southeast Arabia: A three thousand year record of runoff farming from central Oman (Rustaq)
by L. Purdue 9/21 ScienceDirect
Runoff farming is a key hydro-agricultural strategy that has proven efficient in arid areas. Research in Arabia on the function, development, maintenance, durability and abandonment of this technology is scarce. A multiproxy investigation (cartography, sedimentology, pedology, geochemistry, paleo-ecology and chronology) was conducted on a recently abandoned terraced area in Rustaq, Northern Oman.
Investigating early agriculture, plant use and culinary practices at Neolithic Jarmo (Iraqi Kurdistan)
by Lara González Carretero 12/23 ScienceDirect
For many archaeologists, the site of Jarmo in Iraqi Kurdistan is synonymous with the study of early agriculture and with multidisciplinary archaeology. This is due to previous excavations directed by Robert Braidwood (University Chicago) in 1948, 1950–51 and 1954–55 (Braidwood (1960); L. Braidwood et al 1983). Within the Braidwoods’ hypothesis, Jarmo became representative of the earliest agricultural villages associated with the “hilly flanks of the [Fertile] Crescent”, a phrase first used by Robert Braidwood (1948).
Early agriculture’s toll on human health
by George R. Milner 26/6/19 PNAS
It is difficult to envision a world without agriculture. However, as recently as 10 millennia ago, only in the Near East had people turned from hunting and gathering to agriculture as a means of supporting themselves. One such place was Çatalhöyük in modern-day Turkey, the subject of Larsen et al.’s (1) work reported in PNAS (Fig. 1). Several more millennia would pass before a reliance on domesticated plants and animals became commonplace in both the Old and New Worlds.
Early agricultural pathways: moving outside the ‘core area’ hypothesis in Southwest Asia Free
by Dorian Q. Fuller, George Willcox, Robin G. Allaby 4/11/11 OXFORD ACADEMIC
The origins of agriculture in the Near East has been associated with a ‘core area’, located in south-eastern Turkey, in which all major crops were brought into domestication within the same local domestication system operated by a single cultural group. Such an origin leads to a scenario of rapid invention of agriculture by a select cultural group and typically monophyletic origins for most crops.
Origin and Environmental Setting of Ancient Agriculture in the Lowlands of Mesoamerica
Archaeological research in the Gulf Coast of Tabasco reveals the earliest record of maize cultivation in Mexico. The first farmers settled along beach ridges and lagoons of the Grijalva River delta. Pollen from cultivated Zea appears with evidence of forest clearing about 5100 calendar years B.C. (yr B.C.) [620014C years before the present (yr B.P.)]. LargeZea sp. pollen, typical of domesticated maize (Zea mays), appears about 5000 calendar yr B.C. (6000 yr B.P.). AManihot sp. pollen grain dated to 4600 calendar yr B.C. (5800 yr B.P.) may be from domesticated manioc. About 2500 calendar yr B.C. (4000 yr B.P.), domesticated sunflower seeds and cotton pollen appear as farming expanded.
Maritime networks as a vector for early farming/language dispersals: A comparative review
by Mark Hudson 6/25 ScienceDirect
Maritime networks have been proposed as a mechanism for early agricultural and, by extension, language dispersals in several coastal and island regions. In Island Southeast Asia, such networks have sometimes been discussed as an alternative to the farming/language dispersal hypothesis. However, the relationships between Neolithic maritime networks and maritime economies are poorly known.
The History of Ancient Nubia
Known for rich deposits of gold, Nubia was also the gateway through which luxury products like incense, ivory, and ebony traveled from their source in sub-Saharan Africa to the civilizations of Egypt and the Mediterranean.
Early Agricultural Communities
With the highly efficient, organized nature of modern farming, it can be difficult to envision a world where agriculture was an innovative new technology. Yet, 10,000 to 15,000 years ago, during the Neolithic Age, new agricultural communities in Mesopotamia (in southwest Asia), northern Africa, China, and South America began tending the roots of farming as we know it today.
Neolithic Revolution
The Neolithic Revolution, also called the Agricultural Revolution, marked the transition in human history from small, nomadic bands of hunter-gatherers to larger, agricultural settlements and early civilization. The Neolithic Revolution started around 10,000 B.C. in the Fertile Crescent, a boomerang-shaped region of the Middle East where humans first took up farming.
Re-analysis of archaeobotanical remains from pre- and early agricultural sites provides no evidence for a narrowing of the wild plant food spectrum during the origins of agriculture in southwest Asia
by Michael Wallace 17/11/18 SPRING NATURE Link
Archaeobotanical evidence from southwest Asia is often interpreted as showing that the spectrum of wild plant foods narrowed during the origins of agriculture, but it has long been acknowledged that the recognition of wild plants as foods is problematic. Here, we systematically combine compositional and contextual evidence to recognise the wild plants for which there is strong evidence of their deliberate collection as food at pre-agricultural and early agricultural sites across southwest Asia.
Genomic windows into ancient agriculture of the Americas
by Ornob Alam 16/7/21 Research Communities
Nestled into the canopied highlands of southwestern Honduras, the El Gigante rock shelter appears in landscape photos as an inky crevice overlooking a slope. Its deep, dry interior, a refuge to many a group of humans passing through over the last 11,000 years, came to preserve their tools, fabrics, and foods in accumulating layers of dirt.
Early Agriculture Has Kept Earth Warm for Millennia
Modern human activity is known to drive climate change, but global temperatures were already affected by farmers millennia before the Industrial Revolution. For years, scientists have been debating about the size of preindustrial warming effects caused by human activities. Now, according to Ruddiman et al., new evidence confirms that early agricultural greenhouse gas emissions had a large warming effect that slowed a natural cooling trend.
Early Agriculture and the Rise of Civilization
People began farming at different times in different parts of the world. Around 8500 b.c. hunter-gatherers in the area of southwest Asia known as the Fertile Crescent began to cultivate wild grains and domesticate animals. One thousand years later, people in northern and southern China were growing rice and millet and raising pigs.
Kuk Early Agricultural Site
Kuk Early Agricultural Site consists of 116 ha of swamps in the western highlands of New Guinea 1,500 metres above sea-level. Archaeological excavation has revealed the landscape to be one of wetland reclamation worked almost continuously for 7,000, and possibly for 10,000 years. It contains well-preserved archaeological remains demonstrating the technological leap which transformed plant exploitation to agriculture around 6,500 years ago. It is an excellent example of transformation of agricultural practices over time, from cultivation mounds to draining the wetlands through the digging of ditches with wooden tools.
Early farming in east Africa
by World Archaeology 14/9/24 THE PAST
As a crossroads for various population movements throughout history, many of which included the transmission of crops, the region encompassing Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda has long been believed to have played an important role in the development of early farming. However, almost no ancient plant remains have been found here to date, severely limiting studies of the area’s early agriculture.
16 - Early agriculture in Southeast Asia and the Pacific
by Huw Barton 5/5/15 CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Mainland Southeast Asia (MSEA) and island Southeast Asia (ISEA) form a complex geographic and political region consisting of eleven countries spread from India to China and New Guinea. The best evidence currently of an early vegecultural agriculture lies in the intermontane valleys of New Guinea at the site of Kuk Swamp.
Ancient History of Agriculture
Developed independently by geographically distant populations, systematic agriculture first appeared in Southwest Asia with the bulk of domesticated neolthic crops and livestock now being traced to Turkey via DNA studies. The first grains of domesticated Turkish emmer wheat are found at Abu Hurerya dated to 13,500 BP. The only exceptions to this are barley, domesticated in two sites; in Israel, and East of the Zagros mountains in Iran. The eight so-called founder crops of agriculture appear: first emmer and einkorn wheat, then hulled barley, peas, lentils, bitter vetch, chick peas and flax. Bitter vetch and lentils along with almonds and pistachios appear in Franchthi Cave Greece simultaneously, about 9,000 BC. Neither are native to Greece, and they appear 2,000 years prior to domesticated wheat in the same location. This suggests that the cultivation of legumes and nuts preceded that of grain.
Millets and their role in early agriculture
by S.A. Weber 1/08 ResearchGate
While the importance of such large grained cereal crops as wheat, corn and rice to the beginnings of agriculture are well understood, a small group of small-seeded grasses known as millets are often marginalized or ignored. When millets are incorporated into early farming models they are generally seen as a minor grain crop playing a secondary role in the agricultural strategy.
First evidence of farming in Mideast 23,000 years ago
by American Friends of Tel Aviv University 22/7/15 ScienceDaily
The study focuses on the discovery of the first weed species at the site of a sedentary human camp on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. It was published in PLOS ONE and led by Prof. Ehud Weiss of Bar-Ilan University in collaboration with Prof. Marcelo Sternberg of the Department of Molecular Biology and Ecology of Plants at TAU's Faculty of Life Sciences and Prof. Ofer Bar-Yosef of Harvard University, among other colleagues.
The ancient agricultural revolution: How early farming changed Europe’s landscape
by EUROPEAN WILDERNESS SOCIETY
Garden agriculture’ and the nature of early farming in Europe and the Near East
by Amy Bogaard 18/2/07 Taylor & Francis
This paper takes a comparative approach to early farming, arguing that bioarchaeological work on Neolithic Europe can inform understanding of earlier cultivation and herding in the Near East, where the ‘package’ of crops and livestock emerged in the PPNB period. Evidence for intensive cultivation (‘garden agriculture’) integrated with small-scale herding is outlined for south-east and central Europe before turning to crop and caprine husbandry practices during the PPNB.
History of Agriculture Equipment: Important Developments and Examples
The agriculture industry has a mission to keep the world fed. From hybridizing plants and animals to engineering new arable lands using irrigation (and even land reclaiming land from the sea), farmers have never stopped looking for new methods for increasing food production. More production means more nutrition and more food variety, all while keeping food prices as low as possible. For a concise overview of the agriculture industry, please see our blog here.
intro to archaeology unit 10 study guides
The shift from hunter-gatherer societies to agricultural and sedentary lifestyles marked a pivotal moment in human history. This transition, known as the Neolithic Revolution, occurred independently across the globe between 10,000 and 4,000 years ago, driven by climate change, population pressure, and technological innovations. Agriculture and sedentism led to surplus food production, enabling population growth and the rise of permanent settlements. This shift sparked profound social changes, including the emergence of specialized roles, social hierarchies, and complex political structures that laid the groundwork for early civilizations.
American Agriculture History Minute: Ethnicity in Early Agriculture
by AgNET west RADIO NETWORK 1/11/24
Ethnicity made a difference in early American agriculture. German immigrants brought different practices and traditions to the New World than English, Scottish, or Irish farmers, for example. Each simply carried forward practices from their homeland, but with a lot more land to work with and fertile soil.
Early Agriculture Nearly Tanked Ancient Europe’s Population
by Colin Schultz 2/10/13 Smithsonian magazine
The rise of agriculture changed the world. And we don’t just mean the human world. At its onset, long before the Green Revolution paved the way for vastly improved yields, people were notoriously bad at using the land. To produce our food we used to cut down a staggering number of trees. Deforestation in the western world, driven by land clearing for farming, actually peaked hundreds or thousands of years ago. And, without things like fertilizer or irrigation, or the massive intertwined agricultural system we have today, local shocks—a fire, a drought, a flood—could cut vital food supplies for years.
The history of human-induced soil erosion: Geomorphic legacies, early descriptions and research, and the development of soil conservation—A global synopsis
by Markus Dotterweich 1/11/13 ScienceDirect
This paper presents a global synopsis about the geomorphic evidence of soil erosion in humid and semihumid areas since the beginning of agriculture. Historical documents, starting from ancient records to data from the mid-twentieth century and numerous literature reviews form an extensive assortment of examples that show how soil erosion has been perceived previously by scholars, land surveyors, farmers, land owners, researchers, and policy makers.
History of Agriculture: A Timeline
Agriculture, also known as farming, is the production of food, fiber, animal feed and other goods by harvesting plants and animals. Agriculture is now practiced throughout the world and is an essential part of human civilization and its history dates back thousands of years. Here's a timeline of the history of agriculture:
Period 1: Domestication, Early Farming, and Widespread Impacts (10,000 BP - 4,000 BP)
We will start our historical summary of environment-food systems by describing domestication and early farming (10,000 BP – 4,000 BP). Widespread environmental and social impacts occurred during this period. New agricultural ecosystems were created and spread along with the use of domesticated plants and animals. These agroecosystems contained distinctive species and populations of plants and animals including domesticates, as well as characteristic insects, mammals, soil biota, and uncultivated plants (such as weeds).
Early Agriculture in the Maya Lowlands
by Mary D. Pohl 20/1/17 CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Wetland research in northern Belize provides the earliest evidence for development of agriculture in the Maya Lowlands. Pollen data confirm the introduction of maize and manioc before 3000 B.C. Dramatic deforestation, beginning ca. 2500 B.C. and intensifying in wetland environments ca. 1500-1300 B.C., marks an expansion of agriculture, which occurred in the context of a mixed foraging economy.
