The Neolithic Revolution, Neolithic Demographic
Transition, Agricultural Revolution, or First
Agricultural Revolution was the wide-scale
transition of many human cultures during the
Neolithic period from a lifestyle of hunting
and gathering to one of agriculture and settlement,
making an increasingly larger population possible.
These settled communities permitted humans
to observe and experiment with plants to learn
how they grew and developed. This new knowledge
led to the domestication of plants.Archaeological
data indicates that the domestication of various
types of plants and animals happened in separate
locations worldwide, starting in the geological
epoch of the Holocene around 12,500 years
ago. It was the world's first historically
verifiable revolution in agriculture. The
Neolithic Revolution greatly narrowed the
diversity of foods available, resulting in
a downturn in human nutrition.The Neolithic
Revolution involved far more than the adoption
of a limited set of food-producing techniques.
During the next millennia it would transform
the small and mobile groups of hunter-gatherers
that had hitherto dominated human pre-history
into sedentary (non-nomadic) societies based
in built-up villages and towns. These societies
radically modified their natural environment
by means of specialized food-crop cultivation,
with activities such as irrigation and deforestation
which allowed the production of surplus food.
Other developments found very widely are the
domestication of animals, pottery, polished
stone tools, and rectangular houses.
These developments, sometimes called the Neolithic
package, provided the basis for centralized
administrations and political structures,
hierarchical ideologies, depersonalized systems
of knowledge (e.g. writing), densely populated
settlements, specialization and division of
labour, more trade, the development of non-portable
art and architecture, and property ownership.
The earliest known civilization developed
in Sumer in southern Mesopotamia (c. 6,500
BP); its emergence also heralded the beginning
of the Bronze Age.The relationship of the
above-mentioned Neolithic characteristics
to the onset of agriculture, their sequence
of emergence, and empirical relation to each
other at various Neolithic sites remains the
subject of academic debate, and varies from
place to place, rather than being the outcome
of universal laws of social evolution. The
Levant saw the earliest developments of the
Neolithic Revolution from around 10,000 BCE,
followed by sites in the wider Fertile Crescent.
== Agricultural transition ==
The term Neolithic Revolution was coined in
1923 by V. Gordon Childe to describe the first
in a series of agricultural revolutions in
Middle Eastern history. The period is described
as a "revolution" to denote its importance,
and the great significance and degree of change
affecting the communities in which new agricultural
practices were gradually adopted and refined.
The beginning of this process in different
regions has been dated from 10,000 to 8,000
BC in the Fertile Crescent and perhaps 8000
BC in the Kuk Early Agricultural Site of Melanesia.
This transition everywhere seems associated
with a change from a largely nomadic hunter-gatherer
way of life to a more settled, agrarian-based
one, with the inception of the domestication
of various plant and animal species—depending
on the species locally available, and probably
also influenced by local culture. Recent archaeological
research suggests that in some regions such
as the Southeast Asian peninsula, the transition
from hunter-gatherer to agriculturalist was
not linear, but region-specific.There are
several competing (but not mutually exclusive)
theories as to the factors that drove populations
to take up agriculture. The most prominent
of these are:
The Oasis Theory, originally proposed by Raphael
Pumpelly in 1908, popularized by V. Gordon
Childe in 1928 and summarised in Childe's
book Man Makes Himself. This theory maintains
that as the climate got drier due to the Atlantic
depressions shifting northward, communities
contracted to oases where they were forced
into close association with animals, which
were then domesticated together with planting
of seeds. However, today this theory has little
support amongst archaeologists because subsequent
climate data suggests that the region was
getting wetter rather than drier.
The Hilly Flanks hypothesis, proposed by Robert
Braidwood in 1948, suggests that agriculture
began in the hilly flanks of the Taurus and
Zagros mountains, where the climate was not
drier as Childe had believed, and fertile
land supported a variety of plants and animals
amenable to domestication.
The Feasting model by Brian Hayden suggests
that agriculture was driven by ostentatious
displays of power, such as giving feasts,
to exert dominance. This required assembling
large quantities of food, which drove agricultural
technology.
The Demographic theories proposed by Carl
Sauer and adapted by Lewis Binford and Kent
Flannery posit an increasingly sedentary population
that expanded up to the carrying capacity
of the local environment and required more
food than could be gathered. Various social
and economic factors helped drive the need
for food.
The evolutionary/intentionality theory, developed
by David Rindos and others, views agriculture
as an evolutionary adaptation of plants and
humans. Starting with domestication by protection
of wild plants, it led to specialization of
location and then full-fledged domestication.
Peter Richerson, Robert Boyd, and Robert Bettinger
make a case for the development of agriculture
coinciding with an increasingly stable climate
at the beginning of the Holocene. Ronald Wright's
book and Massey Lecture Series A Short History
of Progress popularized this hypothesis.
The postulated Younger Dryas impact event,
claimed to be in part responsible for megafauna
extinction and ending the last glacial period,
could have provided circumstances that required
the evolution of agricultural societies for
humanity to survive. The agrarian revolution
itself is a reflection of typical overpopulation
by certain species following initial events
during extinction eras; this overpopulation
itself ultimately propagates the extinction
event.
Leonid Grinin argues that whatever plants
were cultivated, the independent invention
of agriculture always took place in special
natural environments (e.g., South-East Asia).
It is supposed that the cultivation of cereals
started somewhere in the Near East: in the
hills of Palestine or Egypt. So Grinin dates
the beginning of the agricultural revolution
within the interval 12,000 to 9,000 BP, though
in some cases the first cultivated plants
or domesticated animals' bones are even of
a more ancient age of 14–15 thousand years
ago.
Andrew Moore suggested that the Neolithic
Revolution originated over long periods of
development in the Levant, possibly beginning
during the Epipaleolithic. In "A Reassessment
of the Neolithic Revolution", Frank Hole further
expanded the relationship between plant and
animal domestication. He suggested the events
could have occurred independently over different
periods of time, in as yet unexplored locations.
He noted that no transition site had been
found documenting the shift from what he termed
immediate and delayed return social systems.
He noted that the full range of domesticated
animals (goats, sheep, cattle and pigs) were
not found until the sixth millennium at Tell
Ramad. Hole concluded that "close attention
should be paid in future investigations to
the western margins of the Euphrates basin,
perhaps as far south as the Arabian Peninsula,
especially where wadis carrying Pleistocene
rainfall runoff flowed."
== 
Domestication of plants ==
Once agriculture started gaining momentum,
around 9000 BC, human activity resulted in
the selective breeding of cereal grasses (beginning
with emmer, einkorn and barley), and not simply
of those that would favour greater caloric
returns through larger seeds. Plants with
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, therefore
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 identified
by Daniel Zohary, who highlighted the importance
of the three cereals, and suggested that domestication
of flax, peas, chickpeas, bitter vetch and
lentils came a little later. Based on analysis
of the genes of domesticated plants, he preferred
theories of a single, or at most a very small
number of domestication events for each taxon
that spread in an arc from the Levantine corridor
around the Fertile Crescent and later into
Europe. Gordon Hillman and Stuart Davies carried
out experiments with wild wheat varieties
to show that the process of domestication
would have occurred over a relatively short
period of between 20 and 200 years. 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. Wild lentils presented a different
problem: 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. 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.
Selectively propagated figs, wild barley and
wild oats were cultivated at the early Neolithic
site of Gilgal I, where in 2006 archaeologists
found caches of seeds of each in quantities
too large to be accounted for even by intensive
gathering, at strata datable to c. 11,000
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 like irrigation, their crops would
yield surpluses that 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 longer. 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 in many different ways.
=== In the Fertile Crescent ===
Early agriculture is believed to have originated
and become widespread in Southwest Asia around
10,000–9,000 BP, though earlier individual
sites have been identified. The Fertile Crescent
region of Southwest Asia is the centre of
domestication for three cereals (einkorn wheat,
emmer wheat and barley), four legumes (lentil,
pea, bitter vetch and chickpea), and flax.
Domestication was a slow process involving
multiple sites for each crop.Finds of large
quantities of seeds and a grinding stone at
the paleolithic site of Ohalo II in the vicinity
of the Sea of Galilee, dated to around 19,400
BP, has shown some of the earliest evidence
for advanced planning of plant food consumption
and suggests that humans at Ohalo II processed
the grain before consumption. Tell Aswad is
the oldest site of agriculture, with domesticated
emmer wheat dated to 10,800 BP. Soon after
came hulled, two-row barley found domesticated
earliest at Jericho in the Jordan valley and
Iraq ed-Dubb in Jordan. Other sites in the
Levantine corridor that show the first evidence
of agriculture include Wadi Faynan 16 and
Netiv Hagdud. Jacques Cauvin noted that the
settlers of Aswad did not domesticate on site,
but "arrived, perhaps from the neighbouring
Anti-Lebanon, already equipped with the seed
for planting". In the Eastern Fertile Crescent,
evidence of cultivation of wild plants has
been found in Choga Gholan in Iran dated to
12,000 BP, suggesting there were multiple
regions in the Fertile Crescent where domestication
evolved roughly contemporaneously. The Heavy
Neolithic Qaraoun culture has been identified
at around fifty sites in Lebanon around the
source springs of the River Jordan, but never
reliably dated.
=== In China ===
Northern China appears to have been the domestication
center for foxtail millet (Setaria italica)
and broomcorn millet (Panicum miliaceum) with
evidence of domestication of these species
approximately 8,000 years ago. These species
were subsequently widely cultivated in the
Yellow River basin (7,500 years ago). Rice
was domesticated in southern China later on.
Soybean was domesticated in northern China
4,500 years ago. Orange and peach also originated
in China. They were cultivated around 2500
BC.
=== In Africa ===
On the African continent, three areas have
been identified as independently developing
agriculture: the Ethiopian highlands, the
Sahel and West Africa. By contrast, Agriculture
in the Nile River Valley is thought to have
developed from the original Neolithic Revolution
in the Fertile Crescent.
Many grinding stones are found with the early
Egyptian Sebilian and Mechian cultures and
evidence has been found of a neolithic domesticated
crop-based economy dating around 7,000 BP.
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 6,500 BP with the Tasian
and Badarian cultures and the arrival of crops
and animals from the Near East.
Bananas and plantains, which were first domesticated
in Southeast Asia, most likely Papua New Guinea,
were re-domesticated in Africa possibly as
early as 5,000 years ago. Asian yams and taro
were also cultivated in Africa.The most famous
crop domesticated in the Ethiopian highlands
is coffee. In addition, khat, ensete, noog,
teff and finger millet were also domesticated
in the Ethiopian highlands. Crops domesticated
in the Sahel region include sorghum and pearl
millet. The kola nut was first domesticated
in West Africa. Other crops domesticated in
West Africa include African rice, yams and
the oil palm.Agriculture spread to Central
and Southern Africa in the Bantu expansion
during the 1st millennium BC to 1st millennium
AD.
=== In the Americas ===
Maize (corn), beans and squash were among
the earliest crops domesticated in Mesoamerica,
with maize beginning about 4000 BC, squash
as early as 6000 BC, and beans by no later
than 4000 BC. Potatoes and manioc were domesticated
in South America. In what is now the eastern
United States, Native Americans domesticated
sunflower, sumpweed and goosefoot around 2500
BC. Sedentary village life based on farming
did not develop until the second millennium
BC, referred to as the formative period.
=== In New Guinea ===
Evidence of drainage ditches at Kuk Swamp
on the borders of the Western and Southern
Highlands of Papua New Guinea shows evidence
of the cultivation of taro and a variety of
other crops, dating back to 11,000 BP. Two
potentially significant economic species,
taro (Colocasia esculenta) and yam (Dioscorea
sp.), have been identified dating at least
to 10,200 calibrated years before present
(cal BP). Further evidence of bananas and
sugarcane dates to 6,950 to 6,440 BP. This
was at the altitudinal limits of these crops,
and it has been suggested that cultivation
in more favourable ranges in the lowlands
may have been even earlier. CSIRO has found
evidence that taro was introduced into the
Solomon Islands for human use, from 28,000
years ago, making taro cultivation the earliest
crop in the world. It seems to have resulted
in the spread of the Trans–New Guinea languages
from New Guinea east into the Solomon Islands
and west into Timor and adjacent areas of
Indonesia. This seems to confirm the theories
of Carl Sauer who, in "Agricultural Origins
and Dispersals", suggested as early as 1952
that this region was a centre of early agriculture.
== 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 dogs (East Asia, about 15,000 years
ago), sheep, goats, cows, and pigs.
=== Domestication of animals in the Middle
East ===
The Middle East served as the source for many
animals that could be domesticated, such as
sheep, goats and pigs. This area was also
the first region to domesticate the dromedary.
Henri Fleisch discovered and termed the Shepherd
Neolithic flint industry from the Bekaa Valley
in Lebanon and suggested that it could have
been used by the earliest nomadic shepherds.
He dated this industry to the Epipaleolithic
or Pre-Pottery Neolithic as it is evidently
not Paleolithic, Mesolithic or even Pottery
Neolithic. 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. This emigration
was mainly on an east-west axis of similar
climates, as crops usually have a narrow optimal
climatic range outside of which they cannot
grow for reasons of light or rain changes.
For instance, wheat does not normally grow
in tropical climates, just like tropical crops
such as bananas do not grow in colder climates.
Some authors, like Jared Diamond, have postulated
that this East-West axis is the main reason
why plant and animal domestication spread
so quickly from the Fertile Crescent to the
rest of Eurasia and North Africa, while it
did not reach through the North-South axis
of Africa to reach the Mediterranean climates
of South Africa, where temperate crops were
successfully imported by ships in the last
500 years. Similarly, the African Zebu of
central Africa and the domesticated bovines
of the fertile-crescent — separated by the
dry sahara desert — were not introduced
into each other's region.
== Consequences ==
=== Social change ===
Despite the significant technological advance,
the Neolithic revolution did not lead immediately
to a rapid growth of population. Its benefits
appear to have been offset by various adverse
effects,
mostly diseases and warfare.The introduction
of agriculture has not necessarily led to
unequivocal progress. The nutritional standards
of the growing Neolithic populations were
inferior to that of hunter-gatherers. Several
ethnological and archaeological studies conclude
that the transition to cereal-based diets
caused a reduction in life expectancy and
stature, an increase in infant mortality and
infectious diseases, the development of chronic,
inflammatory or degenerative diseases (such
as obesity, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular
diseases) and multiple nutritional deficiencies,
including vitamin deficiencies, iron deficiency
anemia and mineral disorders affecting bones
(such as osteoporosis and rickets) and teeth.
Average height went down from 5'10" (178 cm)
for men and 5'6" (168 cm) for women to 5'5"
(165 cm) and 5'1" (155 cm), respectively,
and it took until the twentieth century for
average human height to come back to the pre-Neolithic
Revolution levels.The traditional view is
that agricultural food production supported
a denser population, which in turn supported
larger sedentary communities, the accumulation
of goods and tools, and specialization in
diverse forms of new labor. The development
of larger societies led to the development
of different means of decision making and
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 monopolized
decision-making. Jared Diamond (in The World
Until Yesterday) identifies the availability
of milk and cereal grains as permitting mothers
to raise both an older (e.g. 3 or 4 year old)
and a younger child concurrently. The result
is that a population can increase more rapidly.
Diamond, in agreement with feminist scholars
such as V. Spike Peterson, points out that
agriculture brought about deep social divisions
and encouraged gender inequality.
=== Subsequent revolutions ===
Andrew Sherratt 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 undomesticated animals)
manure for soil conditioning (from all domesticated
animals)
wool (from sheep, llamas, alpacas, and Angora
goats)
milk (from goats, cattle, yaks, sheep, horses
and camels)
traction (from oxen, onagers, donkeys, horses,
camels and dogs)
guarding and herding assistance (dogs)Sherratt
argued 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 of 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 dromedary and
Bactrian 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,
so it is likely that populations that 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.
=== Disease ===
Throughout the development of sedentary societies,
disease spread more rapidly than it had during
the time in which hunter-gatherer societies
existed. Inadequate sanitary practices and
the domestication of animals may explain the
rise in deaths and sickness following the
Neolithic Revolution, as diseases jumped from
the animal to the human population. Some examples
of infectious diseases spread from animals
to humans are influenza, smallpox, and measles.
In concordance with a process of natural selection,
the humans who first domesticated the big
mammals quickly built up immunities to the
diseases as within each generation the individuals
with better immunities had better chances
of survival. In their approximately 10,000
years of shared proximity with animals, such
as cows, Eurasians and Africans became more
resistant to those diseases compared with
the indigenous populations encountered outside
Eurasia and Africa. For instance, the population
of most Caribbean and several Pacific Islands
have been completely wiped out by diseases.
90% or more of many populations of the Americas
were wiped out by European and African diseases
before recorded contact with European explorers
or colonists. Some cultures like the Inca
Empire did have a large domestic mammal, the
llama, but llama milk was not drunk, nor did
llamas live in a closed space with humans,
so the risk of contagion was limited. According
to bioarchaeological research, the effects
of agriculture on physical and dental health
in Southeast Asian rice farming societies
from 4000 to 1500 B.P. was not detrimental
to the same extent as in other world regions.
=== Technology ===
In his book Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared
Diamond argues that Europeans and East Asians
benefited from an advantageous geographical
location that 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 civilizations 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.
== Archaeogenetics ==
The dispersal of Neolithic culture from the
Middle East has recently been associated with
the distribution of human genetic markers.
In Europe, the spread of the Neolithic culture
has been associated with distribution of the
E1b1b lineages and Haplogroup J that are thought
to have arrived in Europe from North Africa
and the Near East respectively. In Africa,
the spread of farming, and notably the Bantu
expansion, is associated with the dispersal
of Y-chromosome haplogroup E1b1a from West
Africa.
== See also ==
Anthropocene
Aşıklı Höyük, in Anatolia
Natufians, a settled culture preceding agriculture
Behavioral modernity
Broad spectrum revolution
Original affluent society
Haplogroup G (Y-DNA)
Haplogroup J2 (Y-DNA)
Haplogroup K (mtDNA)
Neolithic tomb
Surplus product
Göbekli Tepe
Mehrgarh, a Neolithic site in Balochistan
== References ==
== Bibliography ==
Bailey, Douglass. (2001). Balkan Prehistory:
Exclusions, Incorporation and Identity. Routledge
Publishers. ISBN 0415215986.
Bailey, Douglass. (2005). Prehistoric Figurines:
Representation and Corporeality in the Neolithic.
Routledge Publishers. ISBN 0415331528.
Balter, Michael (2005). The Goddess and the
Bull: Catalhoyuk, An Archaeological Journey
to the Dawn of Civilization. New York: Free
Press. ISBN 0743243609.
Bellwood, Peter. (2004). First Farmers: The
Origins of Agricultural Societies. Blackwell
Publishers. ISBN 0631205667
Bocquet-Appel, Jean-Pierre, editor and Ofer
Bar-Yosef, editor, The Neolithic Demographic
Transition and its Consequences, Springer
(October 21, 2008), hardcover, 544 pages,
ISBN 978-1402085383, trade paperback and Kindle
editions are also available.
Cohen, Mark Nathan (1977)The Food Crisis in
Prehistory: Overpopulation and the Origins
of Agriculture. New Haven and London: Yale
University Press. ISBN 0300020163.
Diamond, Jared (1997). Guns, germs and steel.
A short history of everybody for the last
13,000 years.
Diamond, Jared (2002). "Evolution, Consequences
and Future of Plant and Animal Domestication".
Nature, Vol 418.
Harlan, Jack R. (1992). Crops & Man: Views
on Agricultural Origins ASA, CSA, Madison,
WI. https://web.archive.org/web/20060819110723/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
Kuijt, Ian; Finlayson, Bill. (2009). "Evidence
for 
food storage and predomestication granaries
11,000 years ago in the Jordan Valley". PNAS,
Vol. 106, No. 27, pp. 10966–10970.
== External links ==
The Agricultural Revolution on YouTube: Crash
Course World History #1
