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Transition to Agriculture
Transition from Hunting / Gathering to Agriculture
The transition of the human society from a nomadic hunting / gathering to a settled society based on systematic agriculture (also known as the Agricultural Revolution) is considered to be one of the most significant changes in human history. In this paper we shall look at when and how such a change took place and discuss why some historians call this transformation the greatest event of pre-history.
About 12,000 years ago, the human population had spread to most habitable parts of the earth including Australia and North America. Most human societies at the time consisted of small loosely organized groups of hunters / gatherers who adapted to their environment and relied on whatever resources were available in their surrounding territories. These 'territories' were not permanent settlements and the mobile groups of people often moved seasonally in order to remain close to their food supplies. Humans living in temperate and tropical regions typically got 70-80% of their food from 'gathering,' and the balance through 'hunting,' while those living in the Arctic...
Life was communal and egalitarian with few class distinctions. Their mobile way of life was suited to the raising of small families, which kept the populations in check and did not put a strain on the earth's resources and environment.
For reasons that are still being debated among historians and anthropologists alike, systematic agriculture began to replace hunting and gathering societies in the Near East about 10~12,000 years ago and gradually spread to other parts of the world. The transition was by no means sudden and took a few thousand years, but it is still a relatively short period when seen in the context of human history.
The agricultural society was starkly different in many ways as compared to a hunting / gathering society. The most marked difference between the two was that for the first time in their history, human beings started to live a sedentary life…
Bibliography
Agricultural Revolution" (2003) Washington State University's Agricultural Revolution Student Module Retrieved on September 24, 2003 at http://www.wsu.edu/gened/learn-modules/top_agrev/agrev-index.html
Coffin, Judith G., et. al. (2002). "Western Civilizations, Volume 1," Fourteenth Edition. W.W. Norton & Company: New York.
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