The Neolithic revolution was the first agricultural revolution.

It was a gradual change

from nomadic hunting and gathering communities and bands to agriculture and settlement
the adoption of early farming techniques, crop cultivation, and the domestication of animals. The
Neolithic Revolution is important for developments in social organization and technology.
The Neolithic revolution led to living in permanent or semi-permanent settlements. The concept
of land ownership was developed. The natural environment was changed, population
densities grew, and people ate more vegetable and cereal foods in their diet. Hierarchies
developed in society. Grain was stored, and could be traded. Surplus production from
good crop yields helped societies survive bad years.

General process

Excavated remains of a Neolithic dwelling

When humans started to domesticate crops, and certain animals such as dogs, goats, sheep,
and cattle, human society changed.[2][3]Because people now grew crops and raised livestock they
no longer needed to move around. They could build better settlements. Their diet also changed.
It included more oats and vegetables. People also started to keep and manage some foods - it
was not advisable to eat all grain seeds, because then there would be no seeds left to plant the
next year. Also, as there were surpluses in some years, these could be traded for other goods
with other people.
These changes happened in several places of the world, independently. In the Paleolithic there
were many different human species. According to current research, only the modern human
reached the Neolithic phase. By this time, the biological development of man was complete as
evident in the skeletal remains of modem type of man corresponding to the particular period. It is
therefore assumed that the people of this period had grown the capacities for cultural innovation.
Gordon Childe gave the name Neolithic Revolution to this process in the 1920s. He thought that
it was as important as the Industrial Revolution

Theories about the Neolithic revolution

There are different theories why this transition could have happened:

Oasis theory: The climate changed, and it got drier. The first humans went to live in or
near oases (places where there is more water, in the desert) to be able to survive.[7]Some
animals and plants did that too. It was only a small step to domesticate some of the animals
that were there. This theory was advocated by Childe himself. [8] Climate data from the period
does not support it though.

The Hilly Flanks theory. It suggests that agriculture began in the hilly flanks of
the Taurus and Zagros mountains, and that it developed from intensive focused grain
gathering in the region. It was proposed it in 1948.

The Feasting model suggests that agriculture was driven by displays of power, such as
throwing feasts to show dominance. This required assembling large quantities of food which
drove agricultural technology.[9]

The Demographic theories say that the local population grew so much that it was
difficult to support it using hunting and gathering alone. More food was needed than could be
gathered. Various social and economic factors helped drive the need for food. [10][11]

The evolutionary/intentionality theory proposes that agriculture is an evolutionary

adaptation of plants and humans. Domestication of wild plants started by protecting them.
Later, the location where to grow them was chosen more carefully. Finally they were
domesticated.

Main Features
1. Cultivation:
It was the Neolithic culture which started the practice of food production. More
enduring settlements brought other changes. The portable and lightweight material
possessions of many hunter-gatherers were replaced by heavier tool kits and more
lasting houses.
Grind stones, implements of tillage and axes with ground and polished edges were
essential parts of farming culture. Food production led to changed attitudes towards
the environment.

Cereal crops enabled people to store their food, creating surpluses for use in
winter. The hunter-gatherer exploited game, fish and vegetable foods but the farmer
altered the environment by the very nature of exploitation. Shifting cultivation slash
and burn cultivation meant felling trees and burning vegetation to clear the ground
for planting.
Voracious animals stripped pastures of their grass cover, than heavy rainfalls
denuded the hill of valuable soil and the pastures were never the same again. It
implies that, however, elementary the agricultural technology, the farmer changed
the environment.

2. Domestication of Animals:
Animals were first domesticated where potentially tamable species like the wild ox,
goat, sheep, and dog were widely distributed. Having ones own herds of
domesticated mammals ensured a regular meat supply.
Later on, domesticated animals provided by products like milk, cheese, and butter,
as well as skins, tent coverings, and materials for leather shields and armour. Then,
people learned how to harness animal energy for the purpose of transport and
afterwards how to breed animals for specialised tasks like ploughing, egg and milk
supply transport and a host of other utilities.

3. Pottery and Technology:

Pottery making is another achievement of man during Neolithic Age. The
manufacture of pottery is a difficult art and requires a high degree of technological
sophistication. To make a useful pot requires knowledge of clay and the techniques
of firing. Initially, Neolithic pottery was handmade and sun baked. Soft clay rolled
with water could be moulded into any shape. It gave him, beside satisfaction of
creation, newer ideas.
Cultivation, domestication of animals and the new sedentary life style stimulated
another technological development house building. Paleolithic hunter gatherers
lived in the nature made dwellings rock shelters, caves and tree dwellings.
Neolithic settlers required more complex and diverse dwellings. Thatched huts,
houses made of wood with the provision of entry and exit points were Neolithic
innovations. These houses were of permanent nature.

4. Clothing:
Clothing was yet another new development. For the first time in human history,
clothing was made of woven textiles. The raw materials and technology necessary
for the production of clothing came from flax and cotton from domesticated sheep,
and the spindle for spinning and the loom for weaving came from the inventive
human mind. Basket weaving was also evolved and different types of baskets were
made of bamboo and other natural fibers.

Tools
Thus, Neolithic brought a marked change in tool types. Blade tools formed the parts
of other heavy tools, for example, they were fitted into wooden handles to be used as
awl, graver, saw, sickle etc. Wet sandstone was used as abrasive.
As a result, the tools of Neolithic period became much tougher and more durable.
But they used to take a long time for making, especially when a hole had to be bored
through the stone for fastening it with a handle. The new stone-working technique of
boring and grinding was proved very important to prepare a kit of woodworking tools
including planes, choppers, wedges and chisels.
Among them, the war clubs have been differentiated from other kinds of axes, meant
for working on wood. Characteristically all Neolithic axes and adzes are hafted with a
handle. A polished stone axe-head of Neolithic is commonly known as celt.
The practice of fishing was improved during Neolithic period. The implements like
spear, harpoon etc. were profuse among the stone tools of Neolithic Age. As a
consequence of food-production, population growth was accelerated during Neolithic
period. People had settled down in villages and tried to invent certain ways to make
the life easier.

Building of Houses:
The housing became the major cultural achievement of Neolithic people. But we
cannot declare the Neolithic man as the first architect because we have enough
evidences of temporary houses in Mesolithic times. However, most of the Neolithic
settlements were small villages consisting of not more than eight hundred
inhabitants. Such a settled life was possible only for the practice of agriculture.
Usually stones and bricks were used in the make of the houses.
But the selection of materials was largely dependent on the availability of the
resources in local settings. For instance, scarcity of wood and unsuitability of mud
made all houses of northern British Isles with stone. In some Neolithic settlements a
stone or brick-built wall is found to encircle the houses. This acted as a protection
against the wild animals. Every Neolithic community had a facility for storing of
grains. At this time no agricultural or political techniques were developed in order to
manage a city economy.

Manufacture of Boats:
Neolithic settlements were generally built close to the shores of lake. Neolithic
people learnt the use of the trunks of trees. They used to tie several logs together to
make a raft and that was used as water-transport. They also used their axes and fire
to hollow out tree trunks. These served as boats to the Neolithic people. One such
dugout canoe has been recovered from Perth.

Development of Social
Organization:
Maintenance of discipline is the primary condition for all social life. As Neolithic
people began to lead a settled life in groups, automatically obedience to certain rules
and regulation was developed in them. Although no law was possible at that Age, all
the members of a group would abide by a decision taken by elderly people. The form
of the Neolithic houses specially resembles with long joint family houses.
They also have similarity with house types of Indonesian joint family. This particular
feature suggests that perhaps clan-like lineage had developed among the Neolithic
people as a dominant form of social organization. This also means a unilateral
principle that came into being in early Neolithic period. The social life gradually
begets the idea of property.

Development of Culture:
Use of language, discovery of art and the beginning of religion are the chief
indicators of culture. What we mean by culture today had claimed its beginning in
Neolithic Age. In a more primitive stage i.e. in the Paleolithic Age men had no
language. Ideas and feelings used to be communicated through signs. Of course
they could make some kinds of sound to express the situations like getting alarmed
or delighted.
The power of speech was developed with time and the vocabulary also increased.
Although the cave paintings of Upper Paleolithic time have been discovered, the
New Stone age paintings are much more developed. Mans love for art has been
evident in these paintings. Subjects, forms, techniques of art provide the information
about a higher level of culture.

A considerable number of clay figurines of women have been found from the
deposits of New Stone Age. Probably they are the images of mother god. With the
discovery of agriculture people began to worship the land as mother and they also
believed that if the mother could be pleased, she would increase the production of
crops. Neolithic Age thus showed a beautiful ad-mixture of art with religion. Apart
from the mother earth, different natural forces like sun, rain, storm, etc. were also
worshipped aiming at the success in Agriculture.
By producing surplus foodstuffs they made a section of their community free from the
responsibility of food production. So some people got the opportunity to become
artisans and traders, priests and kings, officials and soldiers in an urban setting.
Thus, Neolithic made possible the rise of literate civilizations in the world.

Farming
A significant and far-reaching shift in human subsistence and lifestyle was to be
brought about in those areas where crop farming and cultivation were first
developed, then gradually improved. These developments are also believed to have
greatly encouraged the growth of settlements, since it may be supposed that the
increased need to spend more time and labor in tending crop fields required more
localized dwellings. This trend would continue into the Bronze Age, eventually giving
rise to towns, and later cities and states whose larger populations could be sustained
by the increased productivity from cultivated lands.
The profound differences in human interactions and subsistence methods associated
with the early onset of agricultural practices in the Neolithic have been called
the Neolithic Revolution, a term first coined by the Australian archaeologist and
philologist, Vere Gordon Childe (1892-1957).
One potential benefit of the increasing sophistication and development
of farming technology was an ability (if conditions allowed) to produce a crop yield
which would be surplus to the immediate needs of the community. When such
surpluses were produced, they could be preserved and sequestered for later use
during times of seasonal shortfalls, traded with other communities (giving rise to a

nascent non-subsistence economy), and in general allowed larger populations to be

sustained.
However, it should be noted that early farmers were also adversely affected in times
of crop failures, such as may be caused by drought or pestilence. In instances where
agriculture had become the predominant way of life the sensitivity to these shortages
could be particularly acute, affecting agrarian populations to a sometimes dramatic
extent which otherwise may not have been routinely experienced by former huntergatherer communities. Nevertheless, despite what must have been periodic setbacks
in general agrarian communities proved successful, and their growth and the
expansion of territory under cultivation continued.
Another significant change undergone by many of these newly-agrarian communities
was one of diet. Whereas hunter-gatherer communities typically have diets with a
larger proportion of animal protein, those farmers whose opportunities and
motivation for hunting had lessened might have their food intake derived in large part
just from the proceeds of their plant cultivation. The relative nutritionalbenefits and
disadvantages of these dietary changes, and their overall impact on early societal
development is still the subject of some debate.
The domestication of animals, either as working animal or as a food source
(livestock), was another innovation which altered the societal characteristics of those
Neolithic communities which adopted it. The animal byproduct of dung could be used
as a fertilizer, as fuel or even as a building material. Apart from providing a ready
source of protein and dairy-based products, livestock animals could also be used for
barter and trade. For those communities where the herding of grazing animals was
developed, this often implied a more nomadic existence than is the case for purely
crop-based farming, as the animals were herded or migrated to seasonal pastures (a
practice known as transhumance).

Transition: How?
Now the question is how man from being a predator, a parasite on nature turned into
a controller of food? In farming economy by domestication of animals and plants,
man became confident about his subsistence. The food-production armed the people
to fight against the scarcities of daily life especially in the areas where local

resources were fully consumed. It also saved the people from starvation following
epidemic or disaster in animal kingdom.
The increased availability of food facilitated quick growth of population who settled
down peacefully in permanent habitations. Accumulation of food and mechanism of
storing made the people relatively carefree and this stimulated the habits of
forethought and planning. Within a short period, they become self-sufficient and selfdeterminant; stability in life was established.
Neolithic revolution did not occur overnight, but still it was not a slow and gradual
change rather it can be said a drastic change which brought a radical difference in
the way of life of the people. Neolithic way of life was vastly superior to the
Paleolithic.
Neolithic culture advanced very quickly within a period of a few thousand years.
Possibly it was the women who started the art of cultivation. When man used to go
out for hunting, the women would gather wild plants and fruits from the forest. They
for the first time noted that the seeds falling on the bare ground grew up into plants
from which again seeds could be available.
The melting glaciers also created islands, inlets and bays and moved the sea toward
inland. Many cold-loving animals like mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, mastodon, sloth
etc. disappeared very quickly. Waterways became abound with fish and other
aquatic creatures.
As the growing forest engulfed the tundra and grasslands, the hunting people faced
tremendous difficulty in chasing the new animals in thick forest. Density of animals
per square mile also decreased at this time. Therefore it was a compulsion for them
to work out a series of specialized adaptation based on new local resources.

The people penetrated into every part of the habitable world, except the outer islands
of the Pacific and the poor places like Greenland and Baffin Land. They even
roamed the plain between Britain and Denmark, which is now under the North Sea.
They tried every kinds of available food including acorns i.e. the things that required
special treatment for getting them as edible.
This is the time when they found many migratory animals within close proximity.
Gradually they gained the skill of stockbreeding and realized the importance of
naturally grown crops. This initiated them in searching out the places where the
crops grew well and ultimately they learnt purposeful growing of plant seeds near
their settlement.
But it will be totally a wrong interpretation if we project either the congenial
environment or the enlargement of habitable territory in favour of subsistence
revolution; rather it is the increased exploitative efficiency and adaptability of man
that facilitated the great change over from food collection to food-production.

The Neolithic Agricultural

Revolution
Between 10,000 and 3000 B.C.E., people in several areas around the earth developed
new agricultural methods and machines, such as the plow pulled by horses or oxen.
During this time, people also began the slow domestication and development of both
crops and animals. The results of these changes made agricultural production much
more productive. Food output increased. More land could be farmed by fewer people
or in fewer hours. This resulted in greatly improved production and increased the
availability of food.

RESULTS:
1. Agricultural innovation greatly increased food production output and created a
surplus beyond what was needed for survival. 2. Producing more food freed peoples
time from agricultural work. Some people continued to work in agriculture, while
others did other forms of work. 3. People could specialize in work other than
agriculture. The amount of non-agricultural goods produced increased. 4. With more
food and temporarily better nutrition, population increased. Often, a population
increased at a faster rate than an areas resources were capable of sustaining it, and
nutrition per person returned to its original level. 5. As families and the number of
potential workers grew, food production could increase even more.

The Farming Revolution

Taking root around 12,000 years ago, agriculture triggered such a change in society
and the way in which people lived that its development has been dubbed the
Neolithic Revolution. Traditional hunter-gatherer lifestyles, followed by humans
since their evolution, were swept aside in favor of permanent settlements and a
reliable food supply. Out of agriculture, cities and civilizations grew, and because
crops and animals could now be farmed to meet demand, the global population
rocketedfrom some five million people 10,000 years ago, to more than seven billion
today.
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, its thought that
climatic changes age brought seasonal conditions that favoured annual plants like
wild cereals. Elsewhere, such as in East Asia, increased pressure on natural food
resources may have forced people to find home grown 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
worlds 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 socalled Fertile Crescent, a region covering eastern Turkey, Iraq, and south western
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 werent able
to stomach raw cow milk. But at some point during the spread of farming into south
eastern 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 todayas high as 90
percent in populations of northern countries such as Swedenthe vast majority are
descended from cow herders.

Who Invented Agriculture?

Who first selected wild grains and domesticated them? We know that
before the Neolithic era, people sometimes gathered the seeds of wild

grains and used them for food. The problem with wild varieties is that their
seeds ripen at different times so that they dont all get broadcast at once.
So people (usually women) had to go through fields and shake the ripest
pods, which was a time-consuming method. Some genius (probably a
woman, see above) started saving seeds from the relatively rare stalks that
did all pop at once, and replanted them. It worked, and agriculture was
born.

A Major Turning Point

If you think of evolution in terms of increasing complexity and the
concentration of power, agriculture was a major turning point. In natural
selection, the food supply normally operates as the most important single
limit on population growth. Remove that limit and population can increase
in a geometric progression. And it did with people when agriculture
provided a reliable new source of food.
But that was only the start. A fertile region could support a much larger
population by farming than by hunting and gathering, but in a few
generations the population would multiply and something would have to
give. When the Neolithic world was still young the most obvious answer
when there wasnt enough land any more was to move on into fresh
territory, and of course that happened and explains the rapid expansion of
the Neolithic way of life throughout Eurasia and even into the New World.
This is how biological evolution works. But there was another dimension to
the process, cultural evolution. The uniquely human capacity for intentional
thinking enabled our forebears to adapt much more rapidly to new
environments and new circumstances. And it enabled the people who
stayed behind, when the young folk wandered off in search of new land, to
grow and prosper as well.

Necessity is the Mother of Invention

Both the pioneers and the stay-at-homes faced many challenges as they
went about colonizing the planet. Say the problem at hand was cycles of
flood and drought that kept interrupting the food supply. One solution was
granaries to store enough food to carry people through droughts. But any
such adaptive changes would spawn new challenges requiring further
adaptations... one thing leading to a couple of other things, an accelerating
process seemingly without end.
If we want to know how we got on to that treadmill during the Neolithic era,
we need to look beyond the immediate causes and into what happened to
the basic nature of the evolutionary process itself. For starters, how does
one characterize the invention of agriculture? It wasnt natural selection, it
was intentional. It wasnt really cultural selection, nor was it a product of
group selection. It seems to me that if there is a force or principle that
operates to make an important evolutionary change happen, we have an
example of it here. You dont need divine intervention, you need a
convergence of factors that create a potential market for something that
doesnt yet exist, at least in any visible form, and a convergence of existing
entities that have the potential of getting together and meeting that
emerging need. That convergence of factors, if strong enough, can vastly
improve the prospects for a particular kind of variant in the system, making
it not only viable but eminently desirable. And then that lucky variant may
get discovered. Its as though the planet had a big computer, capable of
finding a very small needle in a very big haystack, scanning for some as yet
unknown thing.
Can that convergence of factors increase the odds that the lucky variant
will be found? If so, can this kind of event help us understand how the
human intentional mind got started? Could its principle also help explain
the emergence of the first life out of our planets primordial soup?
If agriculture did start independently in three different places, then it
provides a kind of laboratory for testing theories of how major evolutionary
breakthroughs emerge. We could look, for example, for similarities and
differences that might shed light on the relative importance of

environmental factors. Is it too much to hope that such studies might prove
useful for cancer research, or conflict resolution, to take examples at
opposite ends of our history of evolution