Neolithic Revolution , Neolithic Demographic Transition , Agricultural Revolution , or First Agricultural Revolution , is a wide-scale transition of many cultures humans during the Neolithic period of the hunting lifestyle and gathered to one of the farms and settlements, making the ever larger population possible. These sedentary communities allow humans to observe and experiment with plants to learn how they grow and develop. This new knowledge leads to the domestication of plants.
Archaeological data show that the domestication of different types of plants and animals takes place in separate locations around the world, beginning in the Holocene geological age some 12,500 years ago. This is the world's first verifiable agricultural revolution in history. The Neolithic Revolution greatly narrows the diversity of available food, resulting in a decline in human nutrition.
The Neolithic Revolution involves far more than the application of a limited set of food production techniques. During the next millennium, it will transform small groups and move from hunter-gatherers who have been dominating prehistoric human beings into a non-nomadic society based in the villages and cities built. These communities radically alter their natural environment by cultivating special crops, with activities such as irrigation and deforestation that enable the production of surplus food. Other developments that are found very widely are the domestication of animals, pottery, polished stone tools, and rectangular houses.
This development, sometimes called the Neolithic package , provides the basis for densely populated settlements, specialization and division of labor, more trade, arts development and non-portable architecture, centralized administration and political structure, ideological hierarchy, non-authorized knowledge systems (eg writing), and property ownership. The earliest known civilizations were developed in Sumer in southern Mesopotamia ( c. 5,500 BP ); its appearance also marks the beginning of the Bronze Age.
The relationship of Neolithic characteristics mentioned above with the beginnings of agriculture, their sequence of occurrences, and their empirical relation to each other at various Neolithic locations remains the subject of academic debate, and varies from place to place, rather than being the result of the universal law of social evolution. The Levant saw the earliest developments of the Neolithic Revolution from about 10,000 BC, followed by sites in the wider Crescent.
Video Neolithic Revolution
Agricultural transitions
The term Neolithic Revolution was created in 1923 by V. Gordon Childe to describe the first in a series of agricultural revolutions in the history of the Middle East. This period is described as a "revolution" to indicate the importance, and the great significance and degree of change that affects societies in which new farming practices are gradually adopted and perfected.
The beginning of this process in various regions has been dated from 10,000 to 8,000 BC in the Fertile Crescent and perhaps 8000 BC at the Early Kuk Farming Site in Melanesia. This transition everywhere seems to be related to a change from the hunter-gatherer lifestyle that mostly moves to a more settled, agrarian-based, with the birth of a domestication of various plant and animal species - depending on locally available species, and possibly also influenced by local culture. Recent archaeological research shows that in some areas such as the Southeast Asian peninsula, the transition from hunter-gatherer to farmer is not linear, but region-specific.
There are several competing (but not mutually exclusive) theories about the factors driving the population to take agriculture. The most prominent are:
- The Oasis Theory, originally proposed by Raphael Pumpelly in 1908, was popularized by V. Gordon Childe in 1928 and is summarized in Childe's Man Manishes. This theory maintains that as the climate dries up as the Atlantic depression shifts northward, communities are contracted out to oases where they are forced closely to the animals, which are then tamed along with seed planting. However, today this theory has little support among archaeologists because subsequent climate data shows that the area is getting wetter than drier. The Hilly Flanks hypothesis, proposed by Robert Braidwood in 1948, shows that agriculture begins on the sides of the hilly Taurus and Zagros mountains, where the climate is no drier as Childe believes, and the fertile soil supports a wide variety of plants and animals -hewan agrees with domestication.
- The Feasting model by Brian Hayden points out that agriculture is driven by a striking display of power, like giving a party, to use dominance. This requires the assembly of large quantities of food, which encourages agricultural technology.
- The Demographic Theory proposed by Carl Sauer and adapted by Lewis Binford and Kent Flannery presupposes an increasingly sedentary population that extends to the carrying capacity of the local environment and requires more food than can be collected. A variety of social and economic factors help drive the need for food.
- The theory of evolution/intentionality, developed by David Rindos and others, views agriculture as an adaptation of plant and human evolution. Starting with domestication with wild plant protection, it leads to a location specialization and then full domestication.
- Peter Richerson, Robert Boyd, and Robert Bettinger make the case for agricultural development that coincides with an increasingly volatile climate at the start of the Holocene. Ronald Wright's Book and Massey Lecture Series Brief History of Progress popularized this hypothesis.
- Younger Dryas postulated arguments, claimed to be responsible for the extinction of the megafauna and ending the last glacial period, can provide circumstances that require the evolution of agricultural societies in order for humanity to survive. The agrarian revolution itself is a reflection of the excess population characteristic of certain species after the initial event during the era of extinction; this overpopulation itself eventually spread the event of extinction.
- Leonid Grinin argues that any cultivated plant, the discovery of independent agriculture always takes place in a special natural environment (eg, Southeast Asia). It is estimated that cereal cultivation begins somewhere in the Near East: in the Palestinian or Egyptian hills. So Grinin dates the beginning of the agricultural revolution in the intervals of 12,000 to 9,000 BP, although in some cases the first cultivated plants or pet bones even from the older age 14-15 thousand years ago. Andrew Moore states that the Neolithic Revolution comes from a long period of development in the Levant, possibly started during Epipaleolithic. In "A Review of the Neolithic Revolution" , Frank Hole expands the relationship between crop and animal domestication. He suggested the event could happen independently over a different time period, in an unexplored location. He noted that no transitional sites were found documenting the shift from what he called the social system back home quickly and delayed. He noted that various pets (goats, sheep, cattle and pigs) were not found until the sixth millennium at Tell Ramad. The hole concludes that "attention should be given in future investigations to the western margins of the Euphrates basin, perhaps as far south as the Arabian Peninsula, especially where the wadis carry the flow of Pleistocene rain flow."
Maps Neolithic Revolution
Plant Domestication
After agriculture began to gain momentum, around 9000 BC, human activity resulted in selective breeding of cereal grass (starting with emmer, einkorn and barley), and not just those who would support larger calorie yields through larger seeds. Plants with properties such as small seeds or bitter taste will be considered undesirable. Plants that quickly pull out their seeds at maturity tend not to be collected during harvest, therefore they are not stored and are not seeded in the next season; harvest year is selected for strains that retain seeds that can be eaten longer.
Some plant species, the "pioneer plant" or the Neolithic founding plant, were identified by Daniel Zohary, who highlighted the importance of three cereals, and suggested that the domestication of flaxseed, peas, beans, bitter vetch and lentils came a little later. Based on the analysis of cultivated plant genes, he prefers single theories, or at most a small number of domestication events for each taxon spreading in the arc of the Levantine corridor around the Fertile Crescent and then to Europe. Gordon Hillman and Stuart Davies experimented with wild wheat varieties to show that the domestication process will occur over a relatively short period of between 20 and 200 years. Some of these pioneering efforts failed initially and plants were abandoned, sometimes taken again and successfully tamed thousands of years later: rye, tried and abandoned in Neolithic Anatolia, made its way to Europe as weed seed and was successfully domesticated in Europe, thousands of years after most farms early. Wild lentils present different problems: most of the wild seeds do not germinate in the first year; the first evidence of lentil domestication, breaking dormancy in their first year, was discovered at the beginning of the Neolithic in Jerf el Ahmar (in modern Syria), and quickly spread southward to the HaGdud Netiv site in the Jordan Valley. This domestication process allows the founder crop to adapt and eventually become larger, more harvested, more reliable in storage and more useful for human populations.
Selectively selectively harvested figures, wild barley and wild oats are cultivated on the early Neolithic site of Gilgal I, where in 2006 archaeologists found their respective cache of seeds too large to be recorded even by intensive collection, on strata that can be recorded into c. 11,000 years ago. Some plants try and then abandoned during the Neolithic period in the Ancient Near East, on sites like Gilgal, then successfully tamed in other parts of the world.
Once the early farmers refine their farming techniques like irrigation, their crops will produce surpluses that require storage. Most hunter gatherers can not easily store old food because their lifestyles migrate, while those who live can save their excess grain. Finally a granary was developed that allowed the village to store their seeds for longer. So with more food, the population grows and the community develops more specialized workers and tools.
The process is not as linear as it once thought, but a more complicated effort, conducted by different human populations in different regions in various ways.
In the Fertile Crescent
Early agriculture is believed to have originated and spread widely in Southwest Asia around 10,000-9,000 BP, although individual sites have previously been identified. The Fertile Crescent region of Southwest Asia is the center of domestication for three cereals (wheat, wheat and wheat), four legumes (lentils, peas, bitter and long beans), and hemp. Domestication is a slow process that involves many sites for each plant.
Finding a large number of seeds and grinding stones at the Ohalo II paleolithic site around the Sea of ââGalilee, dated to about 19,400 BP, has shown some of the earliest evidence for the continued planning of plant-based foods and shows that humans in Ohalo II process whole grains before consumption. Tell Aswad is the oldest agricultural site, with emmer wheat being kept dated to 10,800 BP. Immediately after coming skinned, a two-line barley was found tamed early in Jericho in the Jordan and Iraq ed-Dubb valleys in Jordan. Other sites in the Levantine corridor that show the first agricultural evidence include Wadi Faynan 16 and Netiv Hagdud. Jacques Cauvin noted that the Aswad settlers did not tame on the spot, but "arrived, probably from neighboring Anti-Lebanon, already equipped with seeds for planting" . The Culture of Heavy Neolithic Qaraoun has been identified in about fifty sites in Lebanon around the source of the Jordan River, but never reliable date.
In Chinese
North China appears to have been the center of domestication for millet foxtail (Setaria italica) and broomcorn millet (Panicum miliaceum) with the proof of domestication of this species some 8,000 years ago. This species is then widely cultivated in the Yellow River basin (7,500 years ago). Rice is domesticated in southern China. Soybeans were domesticated in northern China some 4,500 years ago. Oranges and peaches also come from China. They are cultivated around 2500 BC.
In Africa
In the African continent, three areas have been identified as independent agricultural development: the Ethiopian highlands, Sahel and West Africa. By contrast, Agriculture in the Nile River Valley is thought to have flourished from the original Neolithic Revolution in the Fertile Crescent. Many grinding stones are found with culture and cultural evidence Sebilian and Mechian early Egypt have been found from a neolithic plant-based economy derived from about 7,000 BP. Unlike the Middle East, this evidence emerged as a "false dawn" for agriculture, as the site was later abandoned, and permanent farming was then postponed to 6,500 BP with Tasian and Badarian cultures and the arrival of plants and animals from the Near East.
Banana and plantain, the first to be domesticated in Southeast Asia, most likely Papua New Guinea, re-cultivated in Africa probably since 5,000 years ago. Sweet potatoes and Asian taro are also cultivated in Africa.
The most famous plants that are registered in the Ethiopian highlands are coffee. In addition, khat, ensetà ©, noog, teff and finger millet are also registered on the Ethiopian highlands. Tamed plants in the Sahel region include wheat sorghum and pearls. Kola beans are first to be registered in West Africa. Other tropical plants in West Africa include African rice, sweet potato and oil palm.
Agriculture spread to Central and South Africa in Bantu's expansion during the first millennium BC to the first millennium AD.
In the Americas
Corn (corn), peanuts and pumpkin is one of the earliest cultivated plants in Mesoamerica, with corn starting around 4000 BC, pumpkins as early as 6000 BC, and beans not later than 4000 BC. Potatoes and cassava are domesticated in South America. In what is now called the eastern United States, Native Americans tamed sunflowers, sumpweed and goosefoot around 2500 BC. The settled village life based on agriculture did not develop until the second millennium BC, referred to as the formative period.
In New Guinea
Evidence of drainage channels at Rawa Kuk on the border of the Western and Southern Highlands of Papua New Guinea shows evidence of taro cultivation and various other crops, dating back to 11,000 BP. Two potentially significant economic species, taro ( Colocasia esculenta ââi>) and yam ( Dioscorea sp.), Have been identified dating at least up to 10,200 years calibrated before now (BP cal). Further evidence of bananas and sugarcane comes from 6,950 to 6,440 BP. These are the limits of the height of this plant, and it has been suggested that cultivation in a more favorable range in the lowlands may be earlier. CSIRO has found evidence that taro was introduced to the Solomon Islands for human use, from 28,000 years ago, made taro the earliest cultivation of plants in the world. It seems to have resulted in the spread of Trans-New Guinea languages ââfrom eastern New Guinea to the Solomon Islands and west to Timor and adjacent regions of Indonesia. This seems to confirm Carl Sauer's theory which, in the "Origins and Distribution of Agriculture", suggested as early as 1952 that this area was an early agricultural center.
Domestication of animals
As hunter-gatherers begin to be replaced by the production of immobile foods, it becomes more advantageous to keep animals close. Therefore, it becomes necessary to bring animals permanently to their settlements, although in many cases there is a difference between relatively settled farmers and nomadic herders. Size, temperament, diet, mating patterns, and age ranges of animals are factors in the desire and success in taming animals. Animals that provide milk, such as cows and goats, offer a renewable source of protein and are therefore very valuable. The ability of animals as workers (eg plowing or pulling), as well as food sources, must also be taken into account. In addition to being a direct source of food, certain animals can provide skin, wool, skin, and fertilizer. Some of the earliest pets include dogs (East Asia, about 15,000 years ago), sheep, goats, cows, and pigs.
Animal domestication in the Middle East
The Middle East serves as a source for many animals that can be domesticated, such as sheep, goats, and pigs. This area is also the first area to tame the dromedary. Henri Fleisch discovered and termed the Shepherd Neolithic flint industry of the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon and suggested that it could be used by the earliest nomad herders. He is dating the industry to Epipaleolithic or Pre-Pottery Neolithic because it is definitely not Paleolithic, Mesolithic or even Pottery Neolithic. The presence of these animals gives this region a great advantage in cultural and economic development. As the climate in the Middle East changes and becomes drier, many farmers are forced to leave, bringing their pets with them. This massive emigration from the Middle East will help to distribute these animals throughout Afroeurasia. These emigrants are primarily on the east-west axis of the same climate, since plants typically have a narrow optimum climate range outside where they can not grow due to light reasons or changes in rain. For example, wheat usually does not grow in tropical climates, like tropical plants like bananas do not grow in colder climates. Some authors, such as Jared Diamond, have postulated that this East-West axis is the main reason why the domestication of plants and animals spread so fast from the Fertile Crescent to all of Eurasia and North Africa, while not reaching through the North-South African axis to reach the climate Mediterranean South Africa, where temperate plants are successfully imported by ships in the last 500 years. Similarly, African Zebu from central Africa and domesticated cattle from the lush crescent - separated by the dry Sahara desert - were not introduced into their respective territories.
Consequences
Social changes
Despite significant technological advances, the Neolithic revolution did not immediately lead to rapid population growth. The benefits seem to have been offset by various side effects, most illness and warfare.
The introduction of agriculture does not necessarily lead to firm progress. Neolithic population nutrition standards are growing lower than hunter-gatherers. Some studies of ethnology and archeology conclude that the transition to a cereal-based diet leads to a decrease in life expectancy and height, increased infant mortality and infectious disease, the development of chronic, inflammatory or degenerative diseases (such as obesity, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease) and various nutritional deficiencies, including vitamin deficiency, iron deficiency anemia and mineral disorders that affect bone (such as osteoporosis and rickets) and teeth. The average altitude dropped from 5'10 "(178 cm) for men and 5'6" (168 cm) for women to be 5'5 "(165 cm) and 5'1" (155 cm), respectively, and it took until the twentieth century for the average human height to return to the pre-Neolithic Revolutionary level.
The traditional view is that agricultural production supports a denser population, which in turn supports larger settled communities, the accumulation of goods and equipment, and specialization in new forms of work. Greater community development leads to the development of various decision-making tools and government organizations. Food surplus allows the development of social elites who are not involved in agriculture, industry or commerce, but dominate their communities in other ways and monopolize decision-making. Jared Diamond (In The World To Yesterday) identifies the availability of cereal milk and grains as it allows mothers to raise older children (eg 3 or 4 years old) and younger children simultaneously. The result is that a population may increase faster. Diamond points out that agriculture brings deep social divisions and encourages inequality between the sexes.
The next revolution
Andrew Sherratt argues that following the Neolithic Revolution is the second stage of the invention which he calls the secondary product revolution. Animals, apparently, were first domesticated purely as a source of meat. Secondary Product Revolution occurs when it is recognized that animals also provide a number of other useful products. These include:
- hide and skin (from unidentified animals)
- fertilizer for soil conditioning (of all pets)
- wool (from sheep, llamas, alpacas, and angora goats) Milk
- (from goats, cows, yak, sheep, horses and camels)
- attraction (from oxen, onagers, donkeys, horses, camels and dogs)
- guard and guide help (dog)
Sherratt argues that the phase in agricultural development allows humans to exploit the possibility of their animal energy in new ways, and permit permanent subsistence agriculture and crop production, and the opening of heavier soils for agriculture. It also allows nomadic pastoralism in semi-arid regions, along the edge of the desert, and ultimately leads to the domestication of camel dromedaris and Bactria. Excessive grazing in these areas, especially by goats, greatly extends the area of ââthe desert.
Staying in one place will be easier to allow accrual of personal property and attachment to certain areas of land. From such a position, it is said, prehistoric people can hoard food to survive in difficult times and trade undesirable surpluses with others. Once established trade and food supply is established, the population can grow, and the community will diversify into producers and food craftsmen, who are able to develop their trade based on the leisure time they enjoy because of food surplus. The craftsmen, in turn, were able to develop technologies such as metal weapons. Such relative complexity will require some form of social organization to work efficiently, so that perhaps the population that has such an organization, perhaps as provided by religion, is more prepared and more successful. In addition, more populous populations can form and support the legion of professional soldiers. Also, property ownership has become increasingly important for everyone. Ultimately, Childe argues that this growing social complexity, all rooted in the original decision to settle, led to the second Urban Revolution in which the first cities were built.
Disease
Throughout the development of settled society, the disease spreads faster than that during which time the hunter-gatherer society exists. Inadequate sanitation practices and animal domestication may account for the increase in death and disease after the Neolithic Revolution, as the disease jumps from animal to human population. Some examples of infectious diseases that spread from animal to human are influenza, smallpox, and measles. In line with the process of natural selection, humans who first tamed large mammals quickly build immunity to diseases such as in every generation, individuals with better immunity have a better chance of survival. In about 10,000 years of proximity to animals, such as cattle, Eurasians and Africans became more resistant to the disease than the natives encountered outside Eurasia and Africa. For example, most Caribbean and some Pacific Islander populations have been completely destroyed by disease. 90% or more of the American population is destroyed by European and African diseases prior to recorded contact with European explorers or colonists. Some cultures such as the Inca Empire do have large domestic mammals, llamas, but llamas milk is not drunk, nor are llamas living in enclosed spaces with humans, so the risk of transmission is limited. According to bioarchaeological research, the agricultural effect on physical and dental health in Southeast Asian rice farming communities from 4000 to 1500 B.P. not harm at the same level as in other regions of the world.
Technology
In his book Weapons, Germs and Steel , Jared Diamond argues that Europeans and East Asians benefited from a favorable geographical location that gave them a good start in the Neolithic Revolution. Both share the ideal climate climate for the first farming arrangement, both close to a number of easily tamed plant and animal species, and both are safer than others' attacks rather than civilizations in the central part of the Eurasian continent. Being one of the first to adopt a farming and settling lifestyle, and other early farming neighbors with whom they can compete and trade, both Europe and East Asia are also among the first to benefit from technologies such as firearms and steel swords.
Archaeogenetics
The dissolution of the Neolithic culture of the Middle East has recently been linked to the distribution of human genetic markers. In Europe, the spread of Neolithic culture has been attributed to the distribution of E1b1b and Haplogroup J lines that are thought to have arrived in Europe from North Africa and the Near East respectively. In Africa, agricultural deployment, and especially Bantu expansion, is associated with the spread of the Y1 chromosome E1b1a haplogroup from West Africa.
See also
- Anthropocene
- A ?? kl? HÃÆ'öyÃÆ'ük, in Anatolia
- Natufians, a sedentary culture that precedes agriculture
- Modernity of behavior
- Spectrum revolution
- The original affluent community
- Haplogroup G (Y-DNA)
- Haplogroup J2 (Y-DNA)
- Haplogroup K (mtDNA)
- Neolithic grave
- Surplus products
- G̮'̦bekli Tepe
- Mehrgarh, the Neolithic site in Balochistan
References
Bibliography
- Bailey, Douglass. (2001). Balkan Prehistory: Exceptions, Establishment and Identity. Publisher Routine. ISBNÃ, 0-415-21598-6.
- Bailey, Douglass. (2005). Figurines Prehistory: Representation and Corporeality in Neolithic. Publisher Routines. ISBNÃ, 0-415-33152-8.
- Balter, Michael (2005). The Goddess and the Bull: Catalhoyuk, The Archeology Trip to the Dawn of Civilization. New York: Free Press. ISBNÃ, 0-7432-4360-9.
- Bellwood, Peter. (2004). First Farmer: The Origin of Agricultural Society. Blackwell Publishers. ISBNÃ, 0-631-20566-7
- Bocquet-Appel, Jean-Pierre, editor and Ofer Bar-Yosef, editor, Neolithic Demographic Transition and Its Consequences , Springer (21 October 2008), hardcover, 544 pages, ISBN 978 -1402085383, paperback and Kindle trade editions are also available.
- Cohen, Mark Nathan (1977) Food Crisis in Prehistory: The Advantages of Population and the Origin of Agriculture. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. ISBNÃ, 0-300-02016-3.
- Diamond, Jared (1997). Weapons, germs and steel. A brief history of everyone during the last 13,000 years .
- Diamond, Jared (2002). "The Evolution, the Consequences and Future of Animal Plants and the Domestication". Nature, Vol 418.
- Harlan, Jack R. (1992). Crop & amp; Man: The View of the Origin of Agriculture ASA, CSA, Madison, WI. https://web.archive.org/web/20060819110723/http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/history/lecture03/r_3-1.html
- Wright, Gary A. (1971). "The Origin of Food Production in Southwest Asia: Ideological Survey" Recent Anthropology, Vol. 12, No. 4/5 (Oct.-Dec., 1971), pp.Ã, 447-477
- Kuijt, Ian; Finlayson, Bill. (2009). "Evidence for food storage and granaries predomestikasi 11,000 years ago in the Jordan Valley". PNAS, Vol. 106, No. 27, p. 10966 -10970.
External links
- Agricultural Revolution on YouTube: Crash Course World History # 1
Source of the article : Wikipedia