2. The Revolutions of Agriculture, 10,000 B.C.E.-3,000 B.C.E.
First Farmers
The Revolutions of Agriculture, 10,000 B.C.E.-3,000 B.C.E.

3. The Agricultural Revolution
The initial settlement of the Earth known as the Neolithic Revolution (New Stone Age). Second great achievement.
The deliberate cultivation of particular plants as well as taming and breeding of particular animals.
12,000 years ago.
This whole new way of life gradually replaced the earlier patterns of hunting and gather and provided the foundation for almost everything that followed: growing populations settled villages, animal-borne diseases, horse-drawn chariot warfare, cities, states, empires, civilizations, writing, literature, and much more.

4. Interaction with the Environment
New relationship between humankind and other living things. Women and men were actively changing nature.
Transformed corn from a plant with a cob of an inch or so to six inches by 1500.
Fields with boundaries.
Terraced hillsides.
Irrigation ditches and canals.
Animals were transformed as selective breeding produced:
Sheep that grew more wool
Cows that gave ore mil
Chickens that laid more eggs
What did they lose?
What did they gain?

5. Agricultural Beginnings
Perhaps the most extraordinary feature of the Neolithic Revolution was that it occurred, separately and independently, in many widely scattered parts of the world:
The Fertile Crescent of Southwest Asia
Several places in Sub-Saharan Africa
New Guinea
Mesoamerica
The Andes
Eastern North America
Between 12, ,000 years ago.

7. Common Patterns
Ice Age ends, global warming- created new conditions that made agriculture possible.
Extinction of large mammals pushed people to find new food sources.
Warmer, wetter, and more stable conditions permitted the flourishing of more wild plants.
Deep knowledge of the natural world and how to manage it.

8. Settlement Sedentary way of life.
People were able to settle down and establish more permanent villages.
Abandoned their nomadic ways.
Intensively exploiting the local area.
Supported larger populations.
Technology: Pottery, plows, woven textiles, wheels and wheeled vehicles, metallurgy, baskets, sickles, mortar and pestle.
Who were the innovators of farm tools? Why?
Domestication: Wheat, corn, rice, barley, and sorghum; sheep, pigs, goats, cattle, and horses.
Pros and cons to agriculture?

9. The Globalization of Farming
The extension of farming occurred in two ways:
Diffusion
Migration
Diffusion- Gradual spread of agriculture techniques, plants and animals, and agricultural people.
Exchanged ideas and products.
Migration- Slow colonization or migration of agricultural peoples as growing population pushed them outward.
Spread of language and culture. (Bantu-speaking people, Austronesian-speaking people)

10. Turning Point
A time at which a decisive change in a situation occurs, especially one with beneficial results. (Google.com)
When an event or series of events change the course of history.
What changed and what stays the same?