The history of agriculture begins in the ancient Near East and Southwest Asia, about 10,000 years ago, but it has its roots in the climatic changes at the tail end of the Upper Paleolithic, called the Epipaleolithic, about 10,000 years earlier.
History of Agriculture Timeline
- Last Glacial Maximum ca 18,000 BC
- Early Epipaleolithic 18,000-12,000 BC
- Late Epipaleolithic 12,000-9,600 BC
- Younger Dryas 10,800-9,600 BC
- Early Aceramic Neolithic 9,600-8,000 BC
- Late Aceramic Neolithic 8,000-6,900 BC
The history of agriculture is closely tied to climate changes, or so it certainly seems from the archaeological and environmental evidence. After the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), the northern hemisphere of the planet began a slow warming trend. The glaciers retreated northward, and forested areas began to develop where tundra had been.
By the beginning of the Late Epipaleolithic (or Mesolithic), people moved northward, and lived in larger, more sedentary communities. The large-bodied mammals humans had survived on for thousands of years had disappeared, and now the people broadened their resource base, hunting small game such as gazelle, deer and rabbit, and gathering seeds from wild stands of wheat and barley, and collecting legumes and acorns. But, about 10,800 BC, the Younger Dryas period brought an abrupt and brutal cold turn, and the glaciers returned to Europe, and the forested areas shrank or disappeared. The YD lasted for some 1200 years, during which time people survived as best as they could.
History of Agriculture After the Cold
After the cold lifted, the climate rebounded quickly. People settled into large communities and developed complex social organizations, particularly in the Levant, where the Natufian period was established. Natufian people lived in year-round established communities and developed extensive trade systems to facilitate the movement of black basalt for ground stone tools, obsidian for chipped stone tools, and seashells for personal decoration. The first stone built structures were built in the Zagros Mountains, where people collected seeds from wild cereals and captured wild sheep.
The Aceramic Neolithic period saw the gradual intensification of the collecting of wild cereals, and by 8000 BC, fully domesticated versions of einkorn wheat, barley and chickpeas, and sheep, goat, cattle and pig were in use within the hilly flanks of the Zagros Mountains, and spread outward from there over the next thousand years.
Scholars debate why farming, a labor-intensive way of living compared to hunting and gathering, was invented. It could be that the warming weather created a "baby boom" that needed to be fed; it could be that domesticating animals and plants was seen as a more reliable food source than hunting and gathering could promise. For whatever reason, by 8,000 BC, the die was cast, and human kind had turned towards agriculture.
Sources and Further Information
Cunliffe, Barry. 2008. Europe between the Oceans, 9000 BC-AD 1000. Yale University Press.
Cunliffe, Barry. 1998. Prehistoric Europe: an Illustrated History. Oxford University Press
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