Chapter 1: Breakthroughs of Agriculture- Social Variation in the Age of Agriculture


The deliberate cultivation of particular plants as well as the taming and breeding of particular animals can be referred to by one of two terms: “Neolithic (New Stone Age) Revolution” and “Agricultural Revolution”. The coming of agriculture changed human life in a myriad of ways, not only did it gradually replace the earlier practices of gathering and hunting, but it also led to the ability for populations to grow, villages to settle, animal-borne diseases, cities, states, empires, civilizations, writing, literature and many other things. This led to a new relationship between humankind and other living things as they were now able to change the outcome of a crop off of selection of using the largest product to get seeds for the next crop, they were also able to then change the size of animals based off the size of the animals they bred. This in turn led to these plants and animals no longer being able to survive in the wild, as they grew accustomed to the environment they were designed for and would forever need this altered environment and human care to survive, they lost their natural instincts to a point. Historians have long questioned why the agriculture revolution was so late in the history of humankind, and why they did not have the knowledge of growing and selective breeding earlier on. The agricultural revolution coincided with the last ice age, leaving historians to believe that before these growing conditions were not proper, but after the land was thriving and weather permitted plants to grow stronger than they ever have. This ice age also led to the death of some of the larger mammalians that were consumed, which also could have pushed the need for self-sufficient food production. The warmer more tropical weather may have taken way the larger food sources, but it also led to the growth of some tropical plants, grasses and fruits; which evidence shows our ancestors domesticated. This rise in agriculture also led to the development of new technology, as they needed to develop new tools to aid in the harvesting of these new crops; such as sickles for wheat. Each geographical area soon became synonymous with a certain crop, for example North America was synonymous with squash, while Sudanic Africa was synonymous with sesame and cattle. These advance in the way food was grown, did in turn lead to larger populations, however that did not mean they were healthy from this food. The growing process was found to be very hard and unhealthy for farmers, as they did not have the technology to farm as we do today, all work had to be done by hand. The remains of farmers were found to have large amounts of tooth decay, malnutrition and anemia; they even had shorter statures and shorter life expectancies. Living close to the animals left them prone to harmful diseases such as chicken pox, small pox, malaria, rabies and the plague.

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