The development of agricultural about 12,000 years ago changed the way humans lived. They switched from nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyles to permanent settlements and farming. Grades
How did people discover agriculture?
- high fertility of ground;
- very hostile and unpleasant surrounding territory for wide stretches;
- relatively stable climate.
How was agriculture likely discovered?
The beginnings of agriculture, also known as the Neolithic revolution, are thought to have started 12,000 years ago in the Near East, in the area known as the Fertile Crescent. Climate change may have made it possible to start the cultivation of cereals.
What was the first agriculture?
Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor told Mike Yardley they’ve tried to prioritise local jobs first. “We have shifted as many young New Zealanders as we can into those jobs. I was at a course in Wairarapa last year, we simply can’t do it fast enough.”
What was the origin of Agriculture?
The origins of agriculture occurred from about 10 000 years ago in certain suitable regions, known as “core areas” or “nuclear zones.” The key factor in this process was the biological domestication of targeted plants and animals through selective breeding and other forms of selection (see Domestication and Development of Plant Cultivars).
How long ago did agriculture start?
Wild grains were collected and eaten from at least 105,000 years ago.
Where did agriculture originate?
By 8000 BC, farming was entrenched on the banks of the Nile. About this time, agriculture was developed independently in the Far East, probably in China, with rice rather than wheat as the primary crop. Maize was domesticated from the wild grass teosinte in southern Mexico by 6700 BC.
What were the first foods that were domesticated in the New World?
The potato (8000 BC), tomato, pepper (4000 BC), squash (8000 BC) and several varieties of bean (8000 BC onwards) were domesticated in the New World. Agriculture was independently developed on the island of New Guinea.
What are the social issues that modern agriculture has raised?
Modern agriculture has raised social, political, and environmental issues including overpopulation, water pollution, biofuels, genetically modified organisms, tariffs and farm subsidies. In response, organic farming developed in the twentieth century as an alternative to the use of synthetic pesticides.
How has agriculture changed since 1900?
Since 1900, agriculture in the developed nations, and to a lesser extent in the developing world, has seen large rises in productivity as human labour has been replaced by mechanization, and assisted by synthe tic fertilizers, pesticides, and selective breeding.
What were the crops that were introduced in the Middle Ages?
In the Middle Ages, both in the Islamic world and in Europe, agriculture was transformed with improved techniques and the diffusion of crop plants, including the introduction of sugar, rice, cotton and fruit trees such as the orange to Europe by way of Al-Andalus.
Why was clover important to agriculture?
The use of clover was especially important as the legume roots replenished soil nitrates. The mechanisation and rationalisation of agriculture was another important factor.
Overview
The history of agriculture records the domestication of plants and animals and the development and dissemination of techniques for raising them productively. Agriculture began independently in different parts of the globe, and included a diverse range of taxa. At least eleven separate regions of the Old and New World were involved as independent centers of origin.
Origins
Scholars have developed a number of hypotheses to explain the historical origins of agriculture. Studies of the transition from hunter-gatherer to agricultural societies indicate an antecedent period of intensification and increasing sedentism; examples are the Natufian culture in the Levant, and the Early Chinese Neolithic in China. Current models indicate that wild stands that …
Civilizations
Sumerian farmers grew the cereals barley and wheat, starting to live in villages from about 8000 BC. Given the low rainfall of the region, agriculture relied on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Irrigation canals leading from the rivers permitted the growth of cereals in large enough quantities to support cities. The first ploughs appear in pictographs from Uruk around 3000 BC; seed-ploughs that funneled s…
Middle Ages and Early Modern period
From 100 BC to 1600 AD, world population continued to grow along with land use, as evidenced by the rapid increase in methane emissions from cattle and the cultivation of rice.
The Middle Ages saw further improvements in agriculture. Monasteries spread throughout Europe and became important centers for the collection of knowled…
Modern agriculture
Between the 17th century and the mid-19th century, Britain saw a large increase in agricultural productivity and net output. New agricultural practices like enclosure, mechanization, four-field crop rotation to maintain soil nutrients, and selective breeding enabled an unprecedented population growth to 5.7 million in 1750, freeing up a significant percentage of the workforce, and thereby helped …
See also
• Agricultural expansion
• Effects of climate change on agriculture
• Farming/language dispersal hypothesis
• Green revolution
Further reading
• Manning, Richard (1 February 2005). Against the Grain: How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 978-1-4668-2342-6.
• Civitello, Linda. Cuisine and Culture: A History of Food and People (Wiley, 2011) excerpt
• Federico, Giovanni. Feeding the World: An Economic History of Agriculture 1800–2000 (Princeton UP, 2005) highly quantitative
External links
• “The Core Historical Literature of Agriculture” from Cornell University Library