Water buffalo and yak were domesticated shortly after in China, India and Tibet.ĭraft animals including oxen, donkeys and camels appeared much later-around 4,000 B.C.-as humans developed trade routes for transporting goods. These originated in Mesopotamia between 10,000 and 13,000 years ago. The first farm animals also included sheep and cattle. They also carried infectious diseases: smallpox, influenza and the measles all spread from domesticated animals to humans. Domesticated animals made the hard, physical labor of farming possible while their milk and meat added variety to the human diet. Domestic pigs were bred from wild boars, for instance, while goats came from the Persian ibex. Livestock: The first livestock were domesticated from animals that Neolithic humans hunted for meat. In Mexico, squash cultivation began about 10,000 years ago, while maize-like crops emerged around 9,000 years ago. Scientists have discovered archaeological remnants of Stone Age rice paddies in Chinese swamps dating back at least 7,700 years. Early humans bred for wheat that stayed on the stem for easier harvesting.Īround the same time that farmers were beginning to sow wheat in the Fertile Crescent, people in Asia started to grow rice and millet. Wild wheat, for instance, falls to the ground and shatters when it is ripe. Neolithic farmers selected for crops that harvested easily. Over time, a domestic species becomes different from its wild relative. These early farmers also domesticated lentils, chickpeas, peas and flax.ĭomestication is the process by which farmers select for desirable traits by breeding successive generations of a plant or animal. Plant domestication: Cereals such as emmer wheat, einkorn wheat and barley were among the first crops domesticated by Neolithic farming communities in the Fertile Crescent. Several large stone tools for grinding grain have been found at the site. Inhabitants of Tell Abu Hureyra initially hunted gazelle and other game. The village was inhabited from roughly 11,500 to 7,000 B.C. Some of the earliest evidence of farming comes from the archaeological site of Tell Abu Hureyra, a small village located along the Euphrates River in modern Syria. The walls of the homes are covered with murals of men hunting, cattle and female goddesses. They buried their dead under the floors of their houses. The inhabitants of Çatalhöyük appear to have valued art and spirituality. The houses were clustered so closely back-to-back that residents had to enter the homes through a hole in the roof. They estimate that as many as 8,000 people may have lived here at one time. Studying Çatalhöyük has given researchers a better understanding of the transition from a nomadic life of hunting and gathering to an agriculture lifestyle.Īrchaeologists have unearthed more than a dozen mud-brick dwellings at the 9,500 year-old Çatalhöyük. The archaeological site of Çatalhöyük in southern Turkey is one of the best-preserved Neolithic settlements. It may have taken humans hundreds or even thousands of years to transition fully from a lifestyle of subsisting on wild plants to keeping small gardens and later tending large crop fields. The Neolithic Era began when some groups of humans gave up the nomadic, hunter-gatherer lifestyle completely to begin farming. Religious artifacts and artistic imagery-progenitors of human civilization-have been uncovered at the earliest Neolithic settlements. Other scientists suggest that intellectual advances in the human brain may have caused people to settle down. Pre-Neolithic people called Natufians started building permanent houses in the region. In the Fertile Crescent, bounded on the west by the Mediterranean Sea and on the east by the Persian Gulf, wild wheat and barley began to grow as it got warmer. Some scientists theorize that climate changes drove the Agricultural Revolution. The Earth entered a warming trend around 14,000 years ago at the end of the last Ice Age. The causes of the Neolithic Revolution may have varied from region to region.

There was no single factor that led humans to begin farming roughly 12,000 years ago. Origins of Man Causes of the Neolithic Revolution

Civilization revolution 3 review