AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION

Tadeo, Kevin
Abesamis, Angelo
Escueta, Aaron
Miolata, Cyrus
MGT198 10/19/2016
 AGRICULTURAL
REVOLUTION
Period of transition from the pre-agricultural
period characterized by a Paleolithic diet,
into an agricultural period characterized by
a diet of cultivated foods
Massive improvements on agricultural
technology
Example: farming equipment, plow, hand
sickle and reapers
 NEOLITHIC PERIOD

Etymology: Greek word neo = NEW

lithos = STONE

Initial transition from hunting and gathering

to settled agriculture in prehistory and
developing the ability to farm crops.
 MAJOR CHANGES
Development of Agriculture
More complex society
Domestication of animals
Sedentary lifestyle
 FERTILE CRESCENT
Harvesting of wild
grains
Jericho, Middle East Domestication of
10,200 BC dogs, sheep and
goats
More sedentary
lifestyle of agriculture
 FACTORS THAT DROVE
POPULATIONS TO TAKE UP
AGRICULTURE
Oasis theory - originally proposed by Raphael
Pumpelly in 1908.
American geologist

Climate got drier due to the Atlantic

depressions
Communities contracted to oases
 FACTORS THAT DROVE
POPULATIONS TO TAKE UP
AGRICULTURE

The Hilly Flanks hypothesis, proposed

by Robert Braidwood in 1948.
American archaeologist and anthropologist
who used to work in Turkey.
Suggests that agriculture began in the
hilly flanks of the Taurus and Zagros
mountains
 FACTORS THAT DROVE
POPULATIONS TO TAKE UP
AGRICULTURE
Feasting model - Brian Hayden (1981)
Canadian academic
Agriculture was driven by ostentatious displays of
power, such as giving feasts, to exert dominance.

Demographic theories - proposed by Carl Sauer (1927)

American Geographer
Refers to the transition from high birth and death rates
to lower birth and death rates as a country develops
from a pre-industrial to an industrialized economic
system.
 FACTORS THAT DROVE
POPULATIONS TO TAKE UP
AGRICULTURE
Evolutionary/Intentionality theory - developed by David
Rindos.
agriculture as a form of co-evolutionary adaptation of
humans and wild plants

Domestication Theory - proposed by Daniel Quinn and

other scholars.
It states that humans first settled in particular areas where
they abandoned their nomadic ways of finding food, then
they practiced animal domestication and agriculture
 EFFECTS OF
NEOLITHIC REVOLUTION

ON SOCIETY:
The traditional view is that the shift to agricultural
food production supported a denser population,
which in turn supported larger sedentary
communities, the accumulation of goods and
tools, and specialization in diverse forms of new
labor.
 EFFECTS OF
NEOLITHIC REVOLUTION

MODERN LIFE:
The way we live today is directly related to
the advances made in the Neolithic
Revolution. From the governments we live
under, to the specialized work laborers do,
to the trade of goods and food, humans
were irrevocably changed by the switch to
sedentary agriculture and domestication of
animals.
SIGNIFICANT INVENTIONS

NEOLITHIC PERIOD
STONE AXE, SICKLES,
GRINDING STONE
10,000 BC
SUMER (SOUTHERN
MESOPOTAMIA); IRAQ
SICKLES - USED FOR
HARVESTING OR REAPING
GRAIN CROPS
AXE USED FOR CLEARING
AND MANUALLY PLOWING THE
SOIL
GRINDING STONE - grinding
flour and to course grains.
POTTERY

CATAL HUYUK
6,500 BC
Rings or coils of clay
FOR STORAGE
PURPOSES
WHEEL

3,000 BC
MESOPOTAMIA
tool for farming and pottery
and moving heavy objects
by using rollers and also
using those rollers to
smooth roads
PLOUGH AND DRAUGHT
ANIMALS
Late 3,000 BC
EGYPT AND
MESOPOTAMIA
MADE UP OF ANTLER
OF DEER OR TREE
BRANCH
OXEN
 Development and Spread of
Agriculture
Farming developed
first in the Middle
East, in an arc of
territory running from
present-day Turkey to
Iraq and Israel (Fertile
Crescent)
Arab Agricultural Revolution
Fundamental transformation
in agriculture from the 7th century to the 13th
century in the Islamic culture.
Medieval Green Revolution historian
Andrew M. Watson in 1974
Their rich contributions are most notable
within the fields of irrigation, farming
techniques, and the introduction of new
plants and crops.
Agricultural evolved in three
ways:
Diffusion of Irrigation System
Crops originated from outside the Islamic
countries were brought throughout the Islamic
world
Improvements in irrigation combined with the
new crops made much land more productive
 Qanat Water System
Qant -also spelled kanat, Persian karez, Berber Arabic foggara;
developed in Iran by the Persians sometime in the early 1st millennium
BC.
a water supply system used to provide a reliable supply of water to human
settlements & for irrigation in hot, arid and semi-arid climates.
Allow water to be transported over long distances in hot dry climates
without losing a large proportion of the water to seepage and evaporation.
Agricultural astrology
Some of the oldest known written records (found on
Sumerian clay tablets which date ca. 4,000 BC)
a type of electional astrology that advises the planting,
cultivating and harvesting of crops based on
moon phases and astrological signs .
often referred to as "planting by the signs"
Compilation of calendars that told him when to plant
each type of crop, when to fertilize, and when to harvest.
 FACT: Lbn Bassal
an original scientist and engineer who lived
in Al-Andalus and wrote about agriculture
and engineered hydraulic systems made
up of wells, ditches, and pumps.
Al-Andalus (Muslim Spain or Islamic
Iberia) a Medieval Muslim territory and
one of the one of the centers of the
medieval green revolution.
 Noria
The word "noria" comes from
the Arabic term, Na-urah,
meaning "the first water
machine."
Invented by Ibn Bassal (fl.
1038-1075 CE) of Al-Andalus,
who pioneered the use of the
flywheel.
Definition: a water wheel used for
raising water from a river so that it
can flow by gravity via aqueduct to
villages and cultivated land for
irrigation.
it has allowed civilizations to nourish
their villages and crops with water,
the most fundamental of resources.
 Along with the migration of farmers and
transfer of irrigation technologies, Food and
fiber crops such as rice, sugar cane, sweet
oranges and hard wheat for bread and pasta
were introduced into Spain from farther east.
Spain too shared in the agricultural revolution
of the Medieval period, which brought many
new crops under intense cultivation.
 New Crops
Agriculture and gardening flourished in Muslim
Al-Andalus.

New crops: Sour (Seville) Oranges, lemons,

limes, bananas, coconuts, watermelons, figs,
spinach, eggplants, mangoes, and artichokes.
 Cash Cropping
A cash crop is an agricultural crop which
is grown for sale to return a profit.

Tobacco, rice, cotton, and sugar

cane were valuable plants and grown on a
large scale in plantations using African
slave labor
 Cash Crops: Sugar cane, cotton, rice,
and tobacco were key crops that the
Spanish and Portuguese carried to the
New World after the end of Muslim rule.
Without these cash crops, colonization of
the New World by Europeans would not
have been such an economic success.
 Global Cash Crops
Trade and Migration from Muslim lands were
coffee, tea, bananas, and vegetables such as
spinach and asparagus by the Europeans.
 Development and Spread of Agriculture

Farming then spread

to parts of Europe.
British Agricultural Revolution
Scottish Agricultural Revolution
A series of New farming
changes began in methods
the 17th to 19th developed in
century. England and
Scottish
landowners wanted
to introduce these
new ideas in
Scotland
 Threshing Machine
Invention of
the Thresher by
Mechanical
Engineer Andrew
Meikle in
Scotland in 1786
devised for the
separation of
grain from stalks
and husks.

Threshing Machine powered by a horse.

 Scotch Plough
was a wood and
iron, animal
draf,primary tillage
implement for use
on heavy ground
invented in the
19th century by
James Anderson.
 MECHANICAL REAPING

Rev. Patrick Bell

1826
MACHINE
Scotland
This reaping machine used a
revolving 12 vane reel to pull
the crop over the cutting
knife, that was made from
triangular reciprocating
blades over fixed triangular
blades. A canvas conveyor
moved the grain and stalks
to the side in a windrow. This
machine was pushed by
livestock and ran on 2
wheels.
 DEANSTONISATION SOIL-
DRAINAGE SYSTEM
James smith
 FRESNO SCRAPER
James Porteous
(Scottish-American)
1883
Fresno, California, USA
The front drawbar is pulled by
two horses, and pulls the scraper
proper behind it, while the
operator walks behind controlling
the depth of scrape with the
handle.
Construction of canals and
ditches in sandy soil
 TULEY TREE SHELTER

Graham Tuley
1979
United Kingdom
tree tubes accelerate growth by
providing a mini-greenhouse
environment that reduces
moisture stress, channels
growth into the main stem and
roots and allows efficient
control of weeds that can rob
young seedlings of soil
moisture and sunlight.
Development and Spread of Agriculture

Agriculture was
invented separately
in Americas
 What is Green Revolution?
A package of modern, western-
style farming techniques used
to transform agriculture in
developing countries.
 Second Agricultural Revolution
Coined as the Attributed to
Green Revolution Norman Borlaug,
which refers to the The Father of
renovation of Green Revolution
agricultural
practices
beginning in
Mexico in the
1940s.
 The crops developed during the Green
Revolution were high yield varieties -
meaning they were domesticated plants
bred specifically to respond to fertilizers
and produce an increased amount of
grain per acre planted.
Fertilizers
 SYNTHETIC HERBICIDE
1940
William Gladstone Templeman
Imperial Chemical Industries during joint
research of UK and USA.
Control is the destruction of unwanted
weeds, or the damage of them to the point
where they are no longer competitive with
the crop.

Suppression is incomplete control still

providing some economic benefit, such as
reduced competition with the crop.

Crop safety, for selective herbicides, is the

relative absence of damage or stress to the
crop. Most selective herbicides cause some
visible stress to crop plants.
 MULTIPLE CROPPING
METHOD
Multiple cropping is growing more than
one kind of crop in the same area. This
can be done in a number of different
ways.
relay cropping and double cropping.
Relay cropping is starting one crop
among another crop that has matured.
Double cropping is another form of
multiple cropping where one crop is
started after the growing season for the
previous crop has ended.
This agricultural technique normally is
used to help maintain nutrient levels in
the soil.
 Various crops can be grown
whereas Irrigation also played a
large role.
Green Revolution technologies
exponentially increased the amount
of food production worldwide.
Led to overpopulation