Origin of Agriculture

Agriculture was the first art or trade practiced by man.

At the end of the Paleolithic (Old Stone Age), some 12,000 years ago, after hundreds of thousands of years of biological and cultural evolution, human societies were able to make increasingly varied, sophisticated and specialized tools.

The treatments of ores and the working of metals called for a class with special knowledge. Copper was the first metal to be employed and it was in use from as early as 6400 BC, initiating a period sometimes called the Copper Age.

During the hunter gatherer stage of human development, people gathered grain from various wild grasses, fruits, and roots; hunted large and small wild animals and fished.

The Neolithic revolution encompassed a shift from nomadic hunting and gathering to planting and staying in one place.

Near 8000 BC, people made the major technological advance of domesticating animals and plants.

Observations of a very early date that bear on their relationship have come down today from the civilization that developed in the Sumerians valley of the Euphrates and Tigris.

Large scales of agriculture began when the valley first hooked animals up to a plow and to wheeled carts. These peoples also built ships, which mean they soon need to devise methods of navigation across the sea.

The early part of this agriculture revolution or Neolithic revolution also occurred independently in the Middle East, the orient, New Guinea and the Americas.

A settled agricultural civilization demands tools. Technology developed. The age of stone passed into the age of metals.

The shift from hunter gathering to agriculture allowed, or perhaps caused, the population to grow. The population density should expand by 10 to 100 fold. They developed the urban centers.

The development of organized agriculture along with the domestication of animals led to the development of urban centers; as some scholar remarks, ‘without agriculture three is no culture’.
Origin of Agriculture