Neolithic Revolution

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
(Redirected from
Neolithic revolution
)

Map of Southwest Asia showing the main archaeological sites of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic period, c. 7500 BCE, in the "Fertile Crescent"

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]

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 11,700 years ago, after the end of the last Ice Age.[4] It was the world's first historically verifiable transition to agriculture. The Neolithic Revolution greatly narrowed the diversity of foods available, resulting in a decrease of the quality of human nutrition compared with that obtained previously from foraging,[5][6][7] but because food production became more efficient, it released humans to invest their efforts in other activities and was thus "ultimately necessary to the rise of modern civilization by creating the foundation for the later process of industrialization and sustained economic growth".[8]

The Neolithic Revolution involved much more than the adoption of a limited set of food-producing techniques. During the next millennia it transformed the small and mobile groups of hunter-gatherers that had hitherto dominated

domestication of animals, pottery, polished stone tools, and rectangular houses. In many regions, the adoption of agriculture by prehistoric societies caused episodes of rapid population growth, a phenomenon known as the Neolithic demographic transition
.

These developments, sometimes called the Neolithic package,[9] provided the basis for centralized administrations and political structures, hierarchical ideologies,[10] 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 greater property ownership.[11] The earliest known civilization developed in Sumer in southern Mesopotamia (c. 6,500 BP); its emergence also heralded the beginning of the Bronze Age.[12]

The relationship of the aforementioned 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. It is usually understood to vary from place to place, rather than being the outcome of universal laws of social evolution.[13][14]

Background

cultural exchanges that led to the rise of civilizations and technological evolutions.[15]

However, population increase and food abundance did not necessarily correlate with improved health. Reliance on a very limited variety of

Agricultural transition

Greenland ice cores. The birth of agriculture corresponds to the period of quickly rising temperature at the end of the cold spell of the Younger Dryas and the beginning of the long and warm period of the Holocene.[16]
Map of the world showing approximate centres of origin of agriculture and its spread in prehistory: the Fertile Crescent (11,000 BP), the Yangtze and Yellow River basins (9,000 BP) and the Papua New Guinea Highlands (9,000–6,000 BP), Central Mexico (5,000–4,000 BP), Northern South America (5,000–4,000 BP), sub-Saharan Africa (5,000–4,000 BP, exact location unknown), eastern North America (4,000–3,000 BP).[17]
Associations of wild cereals and other wild grasses in Israel.

The term 'neolithic revolution' was invented by V. Gordon Childe in his book Man Makes Himself (1936).[18][19] Childe introduced it as the first in a series of agricultural revolutions in Middle Eastern history,[20] calling it a "revolution" to denote its significance, the degree of change to communities adopting and refining agricultural practices.[21]

The beginning of this process in different regions has been dated from 10,000 to 8,000 BCE in the

nomadic hunter-gatherer way of life to a more settled, agrarian one, with the domestication of various plant and animal species – depending on the species locally available, and 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.[26]

The most prominent of several theories (not mutually exclusive) as to factors that caused populations to develop agriculture include:

Early harvesting of cereals (23,000 BP)

Composite sickles for cereal harvesting at 23,000-Years-Old

Epipaleolithic, and has been attributed to both periods.[39]

The wear traces indicate that tools were used for harvesting near-ripe semi-green wild cereals, shortly before grains are ripe and disperse naturally.

Natufian and 12,000 years before the establishment of sedentary farming communities in the Near East.[38] Furthermore, the new finds accord well with evidence for the earliest ever cereal cultivation at the site and the use of stone-made grinding implements.[38]

Domestication of plants

Once agriculture started gaining momentum, around 9000 BP, human activity resulted in the

einkorn and barley
), and not simply of those that favoured greater caloric returns through larger seeds. Plants with traits such as small seeds or bitter taste were 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; successive years of harvesting spontaneously selected for strains that retained their edible seeds longer.

An "Orange slice" sickle blade element with inverse, discontinuous retouch on each side, not denticulated. Found in large quantities at Qaraoun II and often with Heavy Neolithic tools in the flint workshops of the Beqaa Valley in Lebanon. Suggested by James Mellaart to be older than the Pottery Neolithic of Byblos (around 8,400 cal. BP).

Jordan Valley.[43] The process of domestication allowed the founder crops to adapt and eventually become larger, more easily harvested, more dependable[clarification needed
] in storage and more useful to the human population.

Neolithic grindstone or quern for processing grain

Selectively propagated figs, wild barley and wild oats were cultivated at the early Neolithic site of Gilgal I, where in 2006[44] 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 (traced as far back as the 6th millennium BCE in Khuzistan[45][46]), their crops yielded 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.

Genetic analysis on the spread of barley from 9,000 to 2,000 BP[47]

Spread of crops: the case of barley

One of the world's most important crops, barley, was domesticated in the Near East around 11,000 years ago (c. 9,000 BCE).[47] Barley is a highly resilient crop, able to grow in varied and marginal environments, such as in regions of high altitude and latitude.[47] Archaeobotanical evidence shows that barley had spread throughout Eurasia by 2,000 BCE.[47] To further elucidate the routes by which barley cultivation was spread through Eurasia, genetic analysis was used to determine genetic diversity and population structure in extant barley taxa.[47] Genetic analysis shows that cultivated barley spread through Eurasia via several different routes, which were most likely separated in both time and space.[47]

Development and diffusion

Beginnings in the Levant

invention of agriculture from c. 10,000 BP. Reconstitution of Pre-Pottery Neolithic B housing in Aşıklı Höyük, modern Turkey
.

Agriculture appeared first in

millennia of pre-domestication cultivation.[48]

Finds of large quantities of seeds and a grinding stone at the

River Jordan, but never reliably dated.[56][57]

In his book Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond argues that the vast continuous east–west stretch of temperate climatic zones of Eurasia and North Africa gave peoples living there a highly 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. In areas where continents aligned north–south such as the Americas and Africa crops, and later domesticated animals, could not spread across tropical zones.[58]

Europe

Spread of farming from Southwest Asia to Europe, between 9600 and 3800 BCE

Archaeologists trace the emergence of food-producing societies in the

southeastern Europe (the Balkans and the Aegean) show some continuity with groups in southwest Asia and Anatolia (e.g., Çatalhöyük
).

Current evidence suggests that Neolithic material culture was introduced to Europe via western Anatolia. All Neolithic sites in Europe contain

The diffusion across Europe, from the Aegean to Britain, took about 2,500 years (8500–6000 BP). The Baltic region was penetrated a bit later, around 5500 BP, and there was also a delay in settling the

Iberian peninsula and along the Atlantic coast.[62]

Carbon 14 evidence

Linear Pottery Culture populations (5,500–4,900 calibrated BP) and modern Western Eurasian populations.[63]

The spread of the Neolithic from the

Cavalli-Sforza discovered a linear relationship between the age of an Early Neolithic site and its distance from the conventional source in the Near East (Jericho), demonstrating that the Neolithic spread at an average speed of about 1 km/yr.[64] More recent studies confirm these results and yield the speed of 0.6–1.3 km/yr (at 95% confidence level).[64]

Analysis of mitochondrial DNA

Since the original human expansions out of Africa 200,000 years ago, different prehistoric and historic migration events have taken place in Europe.[65] Considering that the movement of the people implies a consequent movement of their genes, it is possible to estimate the impact of these migrations through the genetic analysis of human populations.[65] Agricultural and husbandry practices originated 10,000 years ago in a region of the Near East known as the Fertile Crescent.[65] According to the archaeological record this phenomenon, known as “Neolithic”, rapidly expanded from these territories into Europe.[65] However, whether this diffusion was accompanied or not by human migrations is greatly debated.[65] Mitochondrial DNA – a type of maternally inherited DNA located in the cell cytoplasm – was recovered from the remains of Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) farmers in the Near East and then compared to available data from other Neolithic populations in Europe and also to modern populations from South Eastern Europe and the Near East.[65] The obtained results show that substantial human migrations were involved in the Neolithic spread and suggest that the first Neolithic farmers entered Europe following a maritime route through Cyprus and the Aegean Islands.[65]

  • Map of the spread of Neolithic farming cultures from the Near-East to Europe, with dates.
    Map of the spread of Neolithic farming cultures from the Near-East to Europe, with dates.
  • Modern distribution of the haplotypes of PPNB farmers
    Modern distribution of the haplotypes of PPNB farmers
  • Genetic distance between PPNB farmers and modern populations
    Genetic distance between PPNB farmers and modern populations

South Asia

Expansion to South Asia
Early Neolithic sites in the Near East and South Asia 10,000–3,800 BP
Neolithic dispersal from the Near East to South Asia suggested by the time of establishment of Neolithic sites as a function of distance from Gesher, Israel. The dispersal rate amounts to about 0.6 km per year[64]

The earliest Neolithic sites in South Asia are Bhirrana in Haryana dated to 7570–6200 BCE,[66] and Mehrgarh, dated to between 6500 and 5500 BP, in the Kachi plain of Balochistan, Pakistan; the site has evidence of farming (wheat and barley) and herding (cattle, sheep and goats).

There is strong evidence for causal connections between the Near-Eastern Neolithic and that further east, up to the Indus Valley.[67] There are several lines of evidence that support the idea of connection between the Neolithic in the Near East and in the Indian subcontinent.[67] The prehistoric site of Mehrgarh in Baluchistan (modern Pakistan) is the earliest Neolithic site in the north-west Indian subcontinent, dated as early as 8500 BCE.[67] Neolithic domesticated crops in Mehrgarh include more than barley and a small amount of wheat. There is good evidence for the local domestication of barley and the zebu cattle at Mehrgarh, but the wheat varieties are suggested to be of Near-Eastern origin, as the modern distribution of wild varieties of wheat is limited to Northern Levant and Southern Turkey.[67] A detailed satellite map study of a few archaeological sites in the Baluchistan and Khybar Pakhtunkhwa regions also suggests similarities in early phases of farming with sites in Western Asia.[67] Pottery prepared by sequential slab construction, circular fire pits filled with burnt pebbles, and large granaries are common to both Mehrgarh and many Mesopotamian sites.[67] The postures of the skeletal remains in graves at Mehrgarh bear strong resemblance to those at Ali Kosh in the Zagros Mountains of southern Iran.[67] Despite their scarcity, the 14C and archaeological age determinations for early Neolithic sites in Southern Asia exhibit remarkable continuity across the vast region from the Near East to the Indian Subcontinent, consistent with a systematic eastward spread at a speed of about 0.65 km/yr.[67]

In East Asia

Neolithic China (He et al., 2017)[68]

Agriculture in

Neolithic China can be separated into two broad regions, Northern China and Southern China.[68][69]

The agricultural centre in northern China is believed to be the homelands of the early

broomcorn millet (Panicum miliaceum), with early evidence of domestication approximately 8,000 years ago,[70] and widespread cultivation 7,500 years ago.[70] (Soybean was also domesticated in northern China 4,500 years ago.[71] Orange and peach also originated in China, being cultivated c. 2500 BCE.[72][73]
)

language family homelands, and likely routes of early rice transfer (c. 3,500 to 500 BCE). The approximate coastlines during the early Holocene are shown in lighter blue. (Bellwood, 2011)[69]

The agricultural centres in southern China are clustered around the

Yangtze River basin. Rice was domesticated in this region, together with the development of paddy field cultivation, between 13,500 and 8,200 years ago.[68][74][75]

There are two possible centres of domestication for rice. The first is in the lower

Kra-Dai speakers to the south, facilitating the spread of rice cultivation throughout southern China.[75][68][69]

Chronological dispersal of Austronesian peoples across the Indo-Pacific (Bellwood in Chambers, 2008)

The millet and rice-farming cultures also first came into contact with each other at around 9,000 to 7,000 BP, resulting in a corridor between the millet and rice cultivation centres where both rice and millet were cultivated.

Austronesian expansion which started with the migration of the Austronesian-speakers from Taiwan to the Philippines at around 5,000 BP.[69]

Austronesians carried rice cultivation technology to

outrigger canoes.[69][76][77][78] During the 1st millennium CE, they also colonized Madagascar and the Comoros, bringing Southeast Asian food plants, including rice, to East Africa.[79][80]

In Africa

Nile River Valley, Egypt

On the African continent, three areas have been identified as independently developing agriculture: the Ethiopian highlands, the Sahel and West Africa.[81] 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.[82][83] 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

Badarian
culture and the arrival of crops and animals from the Near East.

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.[81]

The most famous crop domesticated in the Ethiopian highlands is

Agriculture spread to Central and Southern Africa in the Bantu expansion during the 1st millennium BCE to 1st millennium CE.

Caral/Norte Chico
)

In the Americas

The term "Neolithic" is not customarily used in describing cultures in the Americas. However, a broad similarity exists between Eastern Hemisphere cultures of the Neolithic and cultures in the Americas.

goosefoot c. 2500 BCE. In the highlands of central Mexico sedentary village life based on farming did not develop until the "formative period" in the second millennium BCE.[85]

In New Guinea

Evidence of drainage ditches at

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.[86][87]
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 efficient 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.

dogs (East Asia, about 15,000 years ago),[89]
sheep, goats, cows, and pigs.

Domestication of animals in the Middle East

Dromedary caravan in Algeria

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

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.[81] 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

World population (estimated) did not rise for a few millennia after the Neolithic revolution.

Despite the significant technological advance and advancements in knowledge, arts and trade, 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.[91][92]

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,

iron deficiency anemia and mineral disorders affecting bones (such as osteoporosis and rickets) and teeth.[93][94][95] 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.[96]

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. 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. Nonetheless, larger societies made it more feasible for people to adopt diverse decision making and governance models.[97] 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.[98][99] This social reshuffle is traced by historical theorists, like Veronica Strang, through developments in theological depictions.[100] Strang supports her theory through a comparison of aquatic deities before and after the Neolithic Agricultural Revolution, most notably the Venus of Lespugue and the Greco-Roman deities such as Circe or Charybdis: the former venerated and respected, the latter dominated and conquered. The theory, supplemented by the widely accepted assumption from Parsons that “society is always the object of religious veneration”,[101] argues that with the centralization of government and the dawn of the Anthropocene, roles within society became more restrictive and were rationalized through the conditioning effect of religion; a process that is crystallized in the progression from polytheism to monotheism.

Subsequent revolutions

Domesticated cow being milked in Ancient Egypt

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.[102] The Secondary Products Revolution occurred when it was recognised that animals also provided a number of other useful products. These included:

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.[102] Overgrazing of these areas, particularly by herds of goats, greatly extended the areal extent of deserts.

Diet and health

Compared to foragers, Neolithic farmers' diets were higher in

body fat, and studies have consistently found that populations around the world became shorter after the transition to agriculture. This trend may have been exacerbated by the greater seasonality of farming diets and with it the increased risk of famine due to crop failure.[6]

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

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 dental health in Southeast Asian rice farming societies from 4000 to 1500 BP was not detrimental to the same extent as in other world regions.[105]

Jonathan C. K. Wells and Jay T. Stock have argued that the dietary changes and increased pathogen exposure associated with agriculture profoundly altered human biology and life history, creating conditions where natural selection favoured the allocation of resources towards reproduction over somatic effort.[6]

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.[106][107] DNA studies have shown that agriculture was introduced in Europe by the expansion of the early farmers from Anatolia about 9,000 years ago.[108]

Comparative chronology

See also

Further reading

References

  1. S2CID 29655920
    .
  2. ^ .
  3. . Retrieved 20 August 2017. [...] The Neolithic transition involved increasing sedentism and social complexity, which was usually followed by the gradual adoption of plant and animal domestication. In some cases, however, plant domestication preceded sedentism, particularly in the New World.
  4. ^ "International Stratigraphic Chart". International Commission on Stratigraphy. Archived from the original on 12 February 2013. Retrieved 6 December 2012.
  5. S2CID 25488602
    .
  6. ^ .
  7. ^ from the original on 5 November 2019. Retrieved 10 July 2020.
  8. (PDF) from the original on 20 July 2018. Retrieved 12 June 2023.
  9. .
  10. ^ "Violence and its causes". unesdoc.unesco.org. Retrieved 18 October 2023.
  11. S2CID 39517784 – via JSTOR
    .
  12. ^ Violatti, Cristian (2 April 2018). "Neolithic Period". World History Encyclopedia.
  13. ^ "The Slow Birth of Agriculture" Archived 1 January 2011 at the Wayback Machine, Heather Pringle
  14. Minnesota State University. Archived from the original
    on 18 June 2008.
  15. ^ a b The Cambridge World History of Food. Cambridge University Press. p. 46.
  16. PMID 28059138
    .
  17. .
  18. ^ a b Childe, Vere Gordon (1936). Man Makes Himself. London: Watts & Company.
  19. S2CID 211663314
    .
  20. ^ "7.6: Neolithic Revolution". Social Sci LibreTexts. 28 April 2018. Retrieved 18 October 2023.
  21. ^ "7.6: Neolithic Revolution". Social Sci LibreTexts. 28 April 2018. Retrieved 18 October 2023.
  22. ^ .
  23. ^ Thissen, L. "Appendix I, The CANeW 14C databases, Anatolia 10,000–5000 cal. BC." in: F. Gérard and L. Thissen (eds.), The Neolithic of Central Anatolia. Internal developments and external relations during the 9th–6th millennia cal BC, Proc. Int. CANeW Round Table, Istanbul 23–24 November 2001, (2002)
  24. (PDF) from the original on 20 November 2021. Retrieved 4 December 2019.
  25. ^ "The Kuk Early Agricultural Site". UNESCO World Heritage Centre. Archived from the original on 22 January 2023. Retrieved 26 December 2019.
  26. S2CID 162916204
    .
  27. ^ Charles E. Redman (1978). Rise of Civilization: From Early Hunters to Urban Society in the Ancient Near East. San Francisco: Freeman.
  28. ^ Hayden, Brian (1992). "Models of Domestication". In Anne Birgitte Gebauer and T. Douglas Price (ed.). Transitions to Agriculture in Prehistory. Madison: Prehistory Press. pp. 11–18.
  29. ^ "The Neolithic Revolution | Early World Civilizations". courses.lumenlearning.com. Retrieved 18 October 2023.
  30. ^ Sauer, Carl O. (1952). Agricultural origins and dispersals. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  31. ^ Binford, Lewis R. (1968). "Post-Pleistocene Adaptations". In Sally R. Binford and Lewis R. Binford (ed.). New Perspectives in Archaeology. Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company. pp. 313–342.
  32. .
  33. .
  34. .
  35. ^ Grinin L.E. Production Revolutions and Periodization of History: A Comparative and Theoretic-mathematical Approach. / Social Evolution & History. Volume 6, Number 2 / September 2007 [1] Archived 20 January 2012 at the Wayback Machine
  36. from the original on 17 June 2022. Retrieved 29 August 2022 – via www.persee.fr.
  37. ^ .
  38. .
  39. – via Google Books.
  40. – via Springer Link.
  41. ^ Hillman, G. C. and M. S. Davies., Domestication rate in wild wheats and barley under primitive cultivation: preliminary results and archaeological implications of field measurements of selection coefficient, pp. 124–132 in P. Anderson-Gerfaud (ed.) Préhistoire de l'agriculture: nouvelles approches expérimentales et ethnographiques. Monographie du CRA 6, Éditions Centre Nationale Recherches Scientifiques: Paris, 1992
  42. ^
    S2CID 83125044
    .
  43. ^ "Tamed 11,400 Years Ago, Figs Were Likely First Domesticated Crop". ScienceDaily. 4 June 2006. Archived from the original on 6 October 2019. Retrieved 28 February 2018.
  44. ^ . Retrieved 12 January 2019. Our earliest evidence for this new technology comes [...] from the lowland steppe of Khuzistan. [...] Once irrigation appeared, the steppe greatly increased its carrying capacity and became, in fact, the dominant growth centre of the Zagros region between 5500 and 4000 B.C.
  45. ^ Lawton, H. W.; Wilke, P. J. (1979). "Ancient Agricultural Systems in Dry Regions of the Old World". In Hall, A. E.; Cannell, G. H.; Lawton, H.W. (eds.). Agriculture in Semi-Arid Environments. Ecological Studies. Vol. 34 (reprint ed.). Berlin: Springer Science & Business Media (published 2012). p. 13. . Retrieved 12 January 2019. Archeological investigations on the Deh Luran Plain of Iran have provided a model for the internal dynamics of the culture sequence of prehistoric Khuzistan [...]. Somewhere between 5500 and 5000 B.C. in the Sabz phase of the Deh Luran Plain, irrigation water was apparently diverted from stream channels in a fashion similar to that employed in early Mesopotamia.
  46. ^ .
  47. (PDF) from the original on 13 February 2016. Retrieved 8 November 2018.
  48. .
  49. ^ Compiled largely with reference to: Weiss, E., Mordechai, E., Simchoni, O., Nadel, D., & Tschauner, H. (2008). Plant-food preparation area on an Upper Paleolithic brush hut floor at Ohalo II, Israel. Journal of Archaeological Science, 35 (8), 2400–2414.
  50. PMID 12270906
    .
  51. ^ van Zeist, W. Bakker-Heeres, J.A.H., Archaeobotanical Studies in the Levant 1. Neolithic Sites in the Damascus Basin: Aswad, Ghoraifé, Ramad., Palaeohistoria, 24, 165–256, 1982.
  52. ^ Hopf, Maria., "Jericho plant remains" in Kathleen M. Kenyon and T. A. Holland (eds.) Excavations at Jericho 5, pp. 576–621, British School of Archaeology at Jerusalem, London, 1983.
  53. . Retrieved 15 August 2012.
  54. from the original on 23 May 2020. Retrieved 8 November 2018.
  55. .
  56. ^ a b L. Copeland; P. Wescombe (1966). Inventory of Stone-Age Sites in Lebanon: North, South and East-Central Lebanon. Imprimerie Catholique. p. 89.
  57. ^ "BBC – History – Ancient History in depth: Overview: From Neolithic to Bronze Age, 8000–800 BC". Archived from the original on 12 May 2021. Retrieved 21 July 2017.
  58. ^ Bellwood 2004, pp. 68–69.
  59. ^ Bellwood 2004, pp. 74, 118.
  60. from the original on 8 May 2021. Retrieved 17 January 2020.
  61. ^ Bellwood 2004, pp. 68–72.
  62. PMID 21085689
    .
  63. ^
    PMID 24806472. Material was copied from this source, which is available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License Archived 16 October 2017 at the Wayback Machine
  64. ^ .
  65. .
  66. ^ .
  67. ^ from the original on 20 November 2021. Retrieved 23 January 2019.
  68. ^ (PDF) from the original on 24 January 2019. Retrieved 23 January 2019.
  69. ^ .
  70. ^ Siddiqi, Mohammad Rafiq (2001). Tylenchida: Parasites of Plants and Insects. CABI.
  71. .
  72. ^ Webber, Herbert John (1967–1989). Chapter I. History and Development of the Citrus Industry Archived 23 May 2016 at the Portuguese Web Archive in Origin of Citrus, Vol. 1. University of California
  73. PMID 21536870
    .
  74. ^ .
  75. .
  76. .
  77. (PDF) from the original on 28 July 2019. Retrieved 23 January 2019.
  78. (PDF) from the original on 21 November 2021. Retrieved 11 July 2019.
  79. .
  80. ^ .
  81. – via Google Books.
  82. ^ Smith, Philip E.L., Stone Age Man on the Nile, Scientific American Vol. 235 No. 2, August 1976: "With the benefit of hindsight we can now see that many Late Paleolithic peoples in the Old World were poised on the brink of plant cultivation and animal husbandry as an alternative to the hunter-gatherer's way of life".
  83. ^ Johannessen, S.; Hastorf, C. A. (eds.). Corn and Culture in the Prehistoric New World. Westview Press.
  84. . Retrieved 4 January 2012.
  85. ^ Denham, Tim et al. (received July 2005) "Early and mid Holocene tool-use and processing of taro (Colocasia esculenta), yam (Dioscorea sp.) and other plants at Kuk Swamp in the highlands of Papua New Guinea" (Journal of Archaeological Science, Volume 33, Issue 5, May 2006)
  86. ^ Loy, Thomas & Matthew Spriggs (1992), " Direct evidence for human use of plants 28,000 years ago: starch residues on stone artefacts from the northern Solomon Islands" (Antiquity Volume: 66, Number: 253, pp. 898–912)
  87. ^ "The Development of Agriculture". Genographic Project. Archived from the original on 14 April 2016. Retrieved 21 July 2017.
  88. ^ McGourty, Christine (22 November 2002). "Origin of dogs traced". BBC News. Archived from the original on 2 November 2019. Retrieved 29 November 2006.
  89. ^ Fleisch, Henri., Notes de Préhistoire Libanaise : 1) Ard es Saoude. 2) La Bekaa Nord. 3) Un polissoir en plein air. BSPF, vol. 63.
  90. ^ James C. Scott,Against the Grain: a Deep History of the Earliest States, NJ: Yale UP, (2017), "The world's population in 10 000 BC, according to a careful estimate was roughly 4 million. A full five thousand years later it has risen only to 5 million...One likely explanation for this apparent human progress in subsistance techniques together with a long period of demographic stagnation is that epidemologically this was perhaps the most lethal period in human history".
  91. ^ "What was the Neolithic Revolution?". National Geographic. 5 April 2019. Archived from the original on 9 October 2022. Retrieved 18 June 2023.
  92. PMID 20467463
    .
  93. .
  94. ^ Shermer, Michael (2001). The Borderlands of Science. Oxford University Press. p. 250.
  95. from the original on 2 April 2012. Retrieved 12 June 2014.
  96. on 17 August 2000.
  97. ^ Diamond, Jared (May 1987). "The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race". Discover Magazine: 64–66. Archived from the original on 10 November 2019. Retrieved 26 July 2021.
  98. S2CID 147633811
    .
  99. – via JSTOR.
  100. – via JSTOR.
  101. ^ a b Sherratt 1981
  102. PMID 20202190
    .
  103. .
  104. .
  105. .
  106. ^ Lancaster, Andrew (2009). "Y Haplogroups, Archaeological Cultures and Language Families: a Review of the Multidisciplinary Comparisons using the case of E-M35" (PDF). Journal of Genetic Genealogy. 5 (1). Archived from the original (PDF) on 6 May 2016. Retrieved 25 August 2009.
  107. ^ "When the First Farmers Arrived in Europe, Inequality Evolved". Scientific American. 1 July 2020. Archived from the original on 25 May 2022. Retrieved 28 October 2022.

Bibliography