In the region of the Middle East in Fertile Crescent which was a boomerang-shaped area where humans first took up farming is where the Neolithic Revolution started, it happened around 10,000 B.C.
Stone Age humans from the other parts of the world shortly afterwards began to practice agriculture. The innovations of the Neolithic Revolution saw a huge growth in civilizations and cities.
Neolithic Age:
The New Stone Age was another very known name of the Neolithic Age. Earlier Stone Age humans who eked out a marginal existence in small bands of hunter-gatherers during the last Ice Age were also seen during this period as Neolithic humans also used stone tools.
In 1935 Australian archaeologist V. Gordon Childe to describe the radical and important period of change in which humans began cultivating plants, breeding animals for food and forming permanent settlements coined the term “Neolithic Revolution”.
The Neolithic people got separated from their Paleolithic ancestors with the advent of agriculture. People started living together in communities which makes us find many facts of modern civilization from that moment of history.
Causes Of The Neolithic Revolution:
Roughly 12,000 years ago there were more than one factor which led humans to begin farming. The Neolithic Revolution was also caused by many reasons which varied from region to region.
Around 14,000 years ago the Earth entered a warming trend at the end of the last Ice Age. The Agricultural Revolution was driven by the changes in climate according to theories of certain Scientists.
On the west by the Mediterranean Sea and on the east by the Persian Gulf was the place where the Fertile Crescent was bounded and wild wheat and barley began to grow as it got warmer.
Permanent houses were built by the Pre-Neolithic people called Natufians in the region. The human brain found some intellectual advances which may have caused people to settle down according to some other scientists.
Religious artifacts and artistic imagery have been uncovered at the earliest Neolithic settlements which were progenitors of human civilization. Some groups of humans gave up the nomadic, hunter-gatherer lifestyle completely to begin farming when the Neolithic Era began.
Transition of humans fully from a lifestyle of subsisting on wild plants to keeping small gardens and later tending large crop fields may have taken hundreds or even thousands of years.
Neolithic Humans:
In southern Turkey the archaeological site of Çatalhöyük is one of the best-preserved Neolithic settlements. The transition from a nomadic life of hunting and gathering to an agriculture lifestyle were understood with more clarity when researchers studied Çatalhöyük.
The 9,500 year-old Çatalhöyük saw more than a dozen mud-brick dwellings which got unearthed by the archeologists. As per their estimation as many as 8,000 people may have lived there at one time.
The Residents had to enter the homes through a hole in the roof as the houses were so closely clustered up back-to-back. Art and spirituality got highly valued by the inhabitants of Çatalhöyük. The dead were buried under the floors of their houses.
Murals of men hunting, cattle and female goddesses covered their home walls. The archaeological site of Tell Abu Hureyra saw some of the earliest evidence of farming.
It was a small village located along the Euphrates River in modern Syria. Roughly from 11,500 to 7,000 B.C. was the time in which the village was inhabited. Gazelle and other animals were initially hunted by the inhabitants of Tell Abu Hureyra.
They began to harvest wild grains around 9,700 B.C.. Several large stone tools have been found at the site which were assigned to be used for grinding grain.
Agricultural Inventions:
Plant domestication: First crops domesticated by Neolithic farming communities in the Fertile Crescent were cereals such as emmer wheat, einkorn wheat and barley; they also domesticated lentils, chickpeas, peas and flax.
A process in which farmers select for desirable traits by breeding successive generations of a plant or animal is called Domestication. A domestic species becomes different from its wild relative over a certain time period.
Crops that harvested easily were selected by Neolithic farmers. For instance, Wild wheat which falls to the ground and shatters when it is ripe. Wheat that stayed on the stem for easier harvesting was bred by the Early Humans.
Farmers began to sow wheat in the Fertile Crescent as well as people in Asia started to grow rice and millet, around the same time.
Stone Age rice paddies in Chinese swamps dating back at least 7,700 years were discovered in archaeological remnants by Scientists. Maize-like crops emerged around 9,000 years ago while squash cultivation began about 10,000 years ago in Mexico.
Livestock: Neolithic humans hunted animals for meat from which the first livestock got domesticated. For instance, goats came from the Persian ibex while domestic pigs were bred from wild boars.
The hard and physical labor of farming got possible with the help of domesticated animals while their milk and meat added variety to the human diet.
Many infectious diseases like smallpox, influenza, and the measles were also carried by them which started spreading from domesticated animals to humans.
Sheep and cattle were among the first farm animals. Between 10,000 and 13,000 years ago in Mesopotamia all of these for originated. In China, India and Tibet water buffalo and yak got domesticated shortly after this period.
Around 4,000 B.C. as humans developed trade routes for transporting goods saw the domestication of animals such as oxen, donkeys and camels.
Effects of the Neolithic Revolution:
Masses of people established permanent settlements supported by farming and agriculture during the Neolithic Revolution.
Bronze Age and Iron Age when advancements in creating tools for farming, wars and art swept the world and brought civilizations together through trade and conquest were given a huge boost during Neolithic period with its innovations and technologies.
Written by: Gourav Chowdhury
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