The Farming Revolution Show There was no single factor, or combination of factors, that led people to take up farming in different parts of the world. In the Near East, for example, it’s thought that climatic changes at the end of the last ice age brought seasonal conditions that favored annual plants like wild cereals. Elsewhere, such as in East Asia, increased pressure on natural food resources may have forced people to find homegrown solutions. But whatever the reasons for its independent origins, farming sowed the seeds for the modern age. Plant Domestication The wild progenitors of crops including wheat, barley, and peas are traced to the Near East region. Cereals were grown in Syria as long as 9,000 years ago, while figs were cultivated even earlier; prehistoric seedless fruits discovered in the Jordan Valley suggest fig trees were being planted some 11,300 years ago. Though the transition from wild harvesting was gradual, the switch from a nomadic to a settled way of life is marked by the appearance of early Neolithic villages with homes equipped with grinding stones for processing grain. The origins of rice and millet farming date to the same Neolithic period in China. The world’s oldest known rice paddy fields, discovered in eastern China in 2007, reveal evidence of ancient cultivation techniques such as flood and fire control. In Mexico, squash cultivation began around 10,000 years ago, but corn (maize) had to wait for natural genetic mutations to be selected for in its wild ancestor, teosinte. While maize-like plants derived from teosinte appear to have been cultivated at least 9,000 years ago, the first directly dated corn cob dates only to around 5,500 years ago. Corn later reached North America, where
cultivated sunflowers also started to bloom some 5,000 years ago. This is also when potato growing in the Andes region of South America began. Farmed Animals Cattle, goats, sheep, and pigs all have their origins as farmed animals in the so-called Fertile Crescent, a region covering eastern Turkey, Iraq, and southwestern Iran. This region kick-started the Neolithic Revolution. Dates for the domestication of these animals range from between 13,000 to 10,000 years ago. Genetic studies show that goats and other livestock accompanied the westward spread of agriculture into Europe, helping to revolutionize Stone Age society. While the extent to which farmers themselves migrated west remains a subject of debate, the dramatic impact of dairy farming on Europeans is clearly stamped in their DNA. Prior to the arrival of domestic cattle in Europe, prehistoric populations weren’t able to stomach raw cow milk. But at some point during the spread of farming into southeastern Europe, a mutation occurred for lactose tolerance that increased in frequency through natural selection thanks to the nourishing benefits of milk. Judging from the prevalence of the milk-drinking gene in Europeans today—as high as 90 percent in populations of northern countries such as Sweden—the vast majority are descended from cow herders.
Under a Creative Commons license Open access Highlights• The stable climate of the Holocene made agriculture and civilization possible. The unstable Pleistocene climate made it impossible before then. •Human societies after agriculture were characterized by overshoot and collapse. Climate change frequently drove these collapses. •Business-as-usual estimates indicate that the climate will warm by 3°C-4 °C by 2100 and by as much as 8°–10 °C after that. •Future climate change will return planet Earth to the unstable climatic conditions of the Pleistocene and agriculture will be impossible. •Human society will once again be characterized by hunting and gathering. AbstractFor most of human history, about 300,000 years, we lived as hunter gatherers in sustainable, egalitarian communities of a few dozen people. Human life on Earth, and our place within the planet’s biophysical systems, changed dramatically with the Holocene, a geological epoch that began about 12,000 years ago. An unprecedented combination of climate stability and warm temperatures made possible a greater dependence on wild grains in several parts of the world. Over the next several thousand years, this dependence led to agriculture and large-scale state societies. These societies show a common pattern of expansion and collapse. Industrial civilization began a few hundred years ago when fossil fuel propelled the human economy to a new level of size and complexity. This change brought many benefits, but it also gave us the existential crisis of global climate change. Climate models indicate that the Earth could warm by 3°C-4 °C by the year 2100 and eventually by as much as 8 °C or more. This would return the planet to the unstable climate conditions of the Pleistocene when agriculture was impossible. Policies could be enacted to make the transition away from industrial civilization less devastating and improve the prospects of our hunter-gatherer descendants. These include aggressive policies to reduce the long-run extremes of climate change, aggressive population reduction policies, rewilding, and protecting the world’s remaining indigenous cultures. KeywordsAgricultural transition Climate change Collapse Holocene Hunter-gatherers Mega-greenhouse effect Cited by (0)© 2019 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. How human settlement affected the environment?On the most basic level, the interaction of human settlements on the environment is that they extract non-renewable natural resources on the one hand and on the other, produce waste products and pollution that has to be absorbed by the natural environment.
How did agriculture influence human settlement?Agricultural communities developed approximately 10,000 years ago when humans began to domesticate plants and animals. By establishing domesticity, families and larger groups were able to build communities and transition from a nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle dependent on foraging and hunting for survival.
What are the effects of human activities on agricultural production?Removing trees and plants, plowing fields, and overgrazing by livestock disrupts roots that stabilize sediment and decrease soil quality. These human activities can increase erosion rates 10 to 100 times. In turn, increasing erosion decreases water quality by increasing sediment and pollutants in rivers and streams.
How did the development of agriculture bring change to human society?More abundant food supplies could support denser populations, and farming tied people to their land. Small settlements grew into towns, and towns grew into cities. Agriculture produced enough food that people became free to pursue interests other than worrying about what they were going to eat that day.
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How has the settlement of humans in agricultural societies impacted the environment?
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