history of agriculture?

Answer 1

Determining the origin of agriculture is problematic since it pre-dates the invention of writing. Some authorities insist localized farming took place more than 10,000 years ago, while others believe the earliest systematic plantings/harvestings took place no more than 7,000 years ago.

The practice of agriculture is often used to distinguish the neolithic period from earlier parts of the stone age. The first crops that humans domesticated included wheat (einkorn and emmer) and barley.

It is clear that farming was invented at least twice, probably more often: once in the Fertile Crescent (some say by the Natufian culture, others say by the Sumerians), once in East Asia (rice), and once in Central America (maize, squash).

Most likely, there was a gradual transition from a hunter-gatherer economy to an agricultural one, via a lengthy period when some crops were deliberately planted, and other foods were gathered from the wild. The reasons for the earliest introduction of farming may have included climate change.

Farming allows a much greater density of population than can be supported by hunting and gathering, and the ability of farmers to feed large numbers of people whose activities have nothing to do with material production was the crucial factor in the rise of standing armies.

After 1492, the world's agricultural patterns were shuffled in the widespread exchange of plants and animals known as the Columbian Exchange. Crops and animals that were previously only known in the Old World were now transplanted in the New, and vice versa.

Archaeobotanists/Paleoethnobotanists have traced the selection and cultivation of specific food plant characteristics, such as a semi-tough rachis and larger seeds, to just after the Younger Dryas (about 9,500 BC) in the early Holocene in the Levant region of the Fertile Crescent. Limited anthropological and archaeological evidence both indicate a grain-grinding culture farming along the Nile in the 10th millennium BC using the world's earliest known type of sickle blades.

There is even earlier evidence for conscious cultivation and seasonal harvest: grains of rye with domestic traits have been recovered from Epi-Palaeolithic (10,000+ BC) contexts at Abu Hureyra in Syria, but this appears to be a localised phenomenon resulting from cultivation of stands of wild rye, rather than a definitive step towards domestication. It is not until ca. 8,500 BC, in middle-Eastern cultures referred to as Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB), where there is the first definite evidence for the emergence of a widespread subsistence economy that was dependent on domesticated plants and animals.

In these contexts lie the origins of the eight so-called founder crops of agriculture: firstly emmer wheat, einkorn wheat, then hulled barley, pea, lentil, bitter vetch, chick pea and flax. These eight crops occur more or less simultaneously on PPNB sites in this region, although the consensus is that wheat was the first to be sown and harvested on a significant scale.

There are many sites that date to between ca. 8,500 BC and 7,500 BC where the systematic farming of these crops contributed the major part of the inhabitants' diet. From the Fertile Crescent agriculture spread eastwards to Central Asia and westwards into Cyprus, Anatolia and, by 7,000 BC, Greece. Farming, principally of emmer and einkorn, reached northwestern Europe via southeastern and central Europe by ca. 4,800 BC.

The reasons for the earliest introduction of farming may have included climate change, but possibly there were also social reasons (e.g. accumulation of food surplus for competitive gift-giving). Most certainly there was a gradual transition from hunter-gatherer to agricultural economies after a lengthy period when some crops were deliberately planted and other foods were gathered from the wild. Although localised climate change is the favoured explanation for the origins of agriculture in the Levant, the fact that farming was 'invented' at least three times, possibly more, suggests that social reasons may have been instrumental. In addition to emergence of farming in the Fertile Crescent, agriculture appeared by at least 6,800 BC in East Asia (rice) and, later, in Central and South America (maize, squash). Small scale agriculture also likely arose independently in early Neolithic contexts in India (rice) and Southeast Asia (taro).

Full dependency on domestic crops and animals (i.e. when wild resources contributed a nutritionally insignificant component to the diet) was not until the Bronze Age. If the operative definition of agriculture includes large scale intensive cultivation of land, mono-cropping, organized irrigation, and use of a specialized labour force, the title "inventors of agriculture" would fall to the Sumerians, starting ca. 5,500 BC.

Intensive farming allows a much greater density of population than can be supported by hunting and gathering and allows for the accumulation of excess product to keep for winter use or to sell for profit. The ability of farmers to feed large numbers of people whose activities have nothing to do with material production was the crucial factor in the rise of standing armies. The agriculturalism of the Sumerians allowed them to embark on an unprecedented territorial expansion, making them the first empire builders. Not long after, the Egyptians, powered by effective farming of the Nile valley, achieved a population density from which enough warriors could be drawn for a territorial expansion more than tripling the Sumerian empire in area.

The invention of a three field system of crop rotation during the Middle Ages vastly improved agricultural efficiency.

After 1492 the world's agricultural patterns were shuffled in the widespread exchange of plants and animals known as the Columbian Exchange. Crops and animals that were previously only known in the Old World were now transplanted to the New and vice versa. Perhaps most notably, the tomato became a favorite in European cuisine, while certain wheat strains quickly took to western hemisphere soils and became a dietary staple even for native North, Central and South Americans.

By the early 1800s agricultural practices, particularly careful selection of hardy strains and cultivars, had so improved that yield per land unit was many times that seen in the Middle Ages and before, especially in the largely virgin lands of North and South America. With the rapid rise of mechanization in the 20th century, especially in the form of the tractor, the demanding tasks of sowing, harvesting and threshing could be performed with a speed and on a scale barely imaginable before. These advances have led to efficiencies enabling certain modern farms in the United States, Argentina, Israel, Germany and a few other nations to output volumes of high quality produce per land unit at what may be the practical limit.

The prehistoric origins of farming

June 18, 2001 - USA News.com

Some of the first seeds of civilization sprouted when people stopped chasing dinner and started raising it. Settlers formed villages. Landowners gained power. And a boom in leisure time eventually led to gourmet delis and Internet cafes. But who shepherded the first lamb or watered the first asparagus crop?

Such questions have long intrigued anthropologists because of a basic curiosity about humanity's major cultural transitions. But recently geneticists have become interested as well, for more practical reasons. A long-range perspective on genetic diversity, they argue, could help modern farmers avoid the perils of selective breeding and cultivate meatier livestock and more resilient crops.
Much of the search for domestication's beginnings has focused on a vast region of the Middle East called the Fertile Crescent. Stretching from the Persian Gulf to southeastern Turkey and northern Egypt, the area's high mountain pastures and low-lying plains were generally hot, wet, and lush at the end of the last Ice Age, 11,000 years ago. Thick stands of barley, rye, wheat, and lentils grew wild. Cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, and gazelles roamed free.

Such conditions were ripe for people to plant their own seeds and tame their own livestock, says Yale archaeologist Frank Hole. Even so, the switch from hunting and gathering to domesticating and cultivating seems to have happened independently in scattered places around the world, according to a flurry of new analyses involving both fossils and DNA.

Goats were likely the first to give up their wild ways, according to archaeologist Melinda Zeder of the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. People don't kill their own goats the same way they kill wild ones, Zeder notes.

To maximize meat for their efforts, hunters kill the biggest animals first, while herders kill small, young males and keep females around longer to breed. In fact, Zeder found a fossil pattern in the Fertile Crescent site of Ganj Dareh, from about 10,000 years ago, that supports that theory.

Other DNA evidence indicates that after the initial domestication of goats, migrating people took the animals with them all over the world to trade as good sources of meat, milk, and wool. Other scientists have found multiple origins for cows, pigs, and yaks.

This new research suggests that modern breeders could learn some important lessons from their predecessors. For thousands of years, shepherds preserved the genetic vigor of their herds by keeping variety in the gene pool, Zeder says.

More recently, breeders have instead sacrificed such genetic diversity for profitable traits, including rapid growth, disease resistance, and higher-quality meat, milk, and fur.


Squash detective. In a similar way, research on ancient plant domestication could help improve today's crops, says Bruce Smith, an archaeobotanist with the National Museum of Natural History. He has pinpointed the origins of squash domestication to 10,000 years ago in Oaxaca, Mexico, and plans to cross wild squash with genetically modified squash to test whether genetic tinkering might threaten biodiversity.

Scientists are also on the trail of the first domesticated corn, beans, carrots, and garlic. One group recently announced dating the first domesticated maize, from a cave in Oaxaca, to about 6,300 years ago. Other work is revealing corn's genetic transformation from an unappetizing, unwieldy plant to the easily harvestable and succulent crop of modern times.

Answer 2

Agriculture is believed to be thrust upon man by God as per the legends. But the background of various civilisations lie in agriculture. Near the rivers, people settled in groups, had their dwellings there, sown he seeds and nuts they had and started to cultivate crops.

Answer 3

There are about five phase of agriculture development:
1.Primitive phase: people plant crop and breed livestock with simple approach and depands on weather.
2.agriculture society phase; people invent manure and other organic fertilizer to compensate soil nutrient lost by plant tear and year.
3.industrial revolution phase:

Answer 4

The early man found that the seeds from trees, plants etc. germinated when they fall on the soil after rain. The little sprout grew into successive plant (generation). The early man identified the economic part of the plants as his food. In the early stage, as a nomadic, he wandered here and there for want of such foods. Then he started to stay in a convenient place in group. At that time, he just collected the seeds of the plants, which produced food for him and brought to his place and sowed in the soil and watered artificially. He got the sufficient food by this practice. When he felt the soil in his place lost its fertility, he shifted to new place and practiced the same. When the demand for food increased, he tried to increase food production by adjusting the time of sowing seeds, method of irrigation (watering) etc. He standardised the spacing of sowing etc. He tried to nurish his soil with the application of manures from cattle wastes. Gradually he improved this practice till now. The main culminations attained in the agriculture are genetically modified seeds, hybrids, vigorous varities of crops, improved soil ploughing methods, drip and sprinkler irrigation methods, applying fertiliser along with water (fertigation), integrated nutrient management, natural resource management, strategies to overcome the pest and diseases of crop plants, development of disease and pest resistant crop plants, tissue culture techniques for true to type crop plantlets, agriculture in green houses (controlled condition) etc. Now he is able to produce surplus food, which can be given to foodless people on exchage.

Answer 5

Pinpointing the absolute beginnings of agriculture is problematic because the transition away from purely hunter-gatherer societies, in some areas, began many thousands of years before the invention of writing. Nonetheless, Archaeobotanists/Paleoethnobotanists have traced the selection and cultivation of specific food plant characteristics, such as a semi-tough rachis and larger seeds, to just after the Younger Dryas (about 9,500 BC) in the early Holocene in the Levant region of the Fertile Crescent. Limited anthropological and archaeological evidence both indicate a grain-grinding culture farming along the Nile in the 10th millennium BC using the world's earliest known type of sickle blades. There is even earlier evidence for conscious cultivation and seasonal harvest: grains of rye with domestic traits have been recovered from Epi-Palaeolithic (10,000+ BC) contexts at Abu Hureyra in Syria, but this appears to be a localised phenomenon resulting from cultivation of stands of wild rye, rather than a definitive step towards domestication. By 8000 BC, farming was in practice in Anatolia. By 7000 BC it reached Mesopotamia, by 6000 BC the Nile River, and by 5000 BC, it had spread to India. Around the same time, agriculture was developed independently in China. Maize was first domesticated from teosinte in the Americas around 3000-2700 BC. In these contexts lie the origins of the eight so-called founder crops of agriculture: firstly emmer and einkorn wheat, then hulled barley, peas, lentils, bitter vetch, chick peas and flax. These eight crops occur more or less simultaneously on PPNB sites in this region, although the consensus is that wheat was the first to be sown and harvested on a significant scale. There are many sites that date to between ca. 8,500 BC and 7,500 BC where the systematic farming of these crops contributed the major part of the inhabitants' diet. From the Fertile Crescent agriculture spread eastwards to Central Asia and westwards into Cyprus, Anatolia and, by 7,000 BC, Greece. Farming, principally of emmer and einkorn, reached northwestern Europe via southeastern and central Europe by ca. 4,800 BC (see, among others, Price, D. [ed.] 2000. Europe's First Farmers. Cambridge University Press; Harris, D. [ed.] 1996 The Origins and Spread of Agriculture in Eurasia. UCL Press).

The reasons for the earliest introduction of farming may have included climate change, but possibly there were also social reasons (e.g. accumulation of food surplus for competitive gift-giving). Most certainly there was a gradual transition from hunter-gatherer to agricultural economies after a lengthy period when some crops were deliberately planted and other foods were gathered from the wild. Although localised climate change is the favoured explanation for the origins of agriculture in the Levant, the fact that farming was 'invented' at least three times, possibly more, suggests that social reasons may have been instrumental.

Full dependency on domestic crops and animals did not occur until the Bronze Age, by which time wild resources contributed a nutritionally insignificant component to the diet. If the operative definition of agriculture includes large scale intensive cultivation of land, mono-cropping, organized irrigation, and use of a specialized labour force, the title "inventors of agriculture" would fall to the Sumerians, starting ca. 5,500 BC. Intensive farming allows a much greater density of population than can be supported by hunting and gathering and allows for the accumulation of excess product to keep for winter use or to sell for profit. The ability of farmers to feed large numbers of people whose activities have nothing to do with material production was the crucial factor in the rise of standing armies. The agriculturalism of the Sumerians allowed them to embark on an unprecedented territorial expansion, making them the first empire builders. Not long after, the Egyptians, powered by effective farming of the Nile valley, achieved a population density from which enough warriors could be drawn for a territorial expansion more than tripling the Sumerian empire in area.[citation needed]

The invention of a three field system of crop rotation during the Middle Ages vastly improved agricultural efficiency.

After 1492 the world's agricultural patterns were shuffled in the widespread exchange of plants and animals known as the Columbian Exchange. Crops and animals that were previously only known in the Old World were now transplanted to the New and vice versa. Perhaps most notably, the tomato became a favorite in European cuisine, with maize and the potato widely grown, while certain wheat strains quickly took to western hemisphere soils and became a dietary staple even for native North, Central and South Americans.

By the early 1800s agricultural practices, particularly careful selection of hardy strains and cultivars, had so improved that yield per land unit was many times that seen in the Middle Ages and before, especially in the largely virgin lands of North and South America. With the rapid rise of mechanization in the 20th century, especially in the form of the tractor, the demanding tasks of sowing, harvesting and threshing could be performed with a speed and on a scale barely imaginable before. These advances have led to efficiencies enabling certain modern farms in the United States, Argentina, Israel, Germany and a few other nations to output volumes of high quality produce per land unit at what may be the practical limit.

Answer 6

i dont want to write too much but i agree with the first guy.