The dawn of agriculture

For more than 300,000 years, humans - Homo sapiens - have lived and roamed the earth. During almost all this time they live off hunting and fishing. They gather shells, insects, fruits, edible roots, berries, and nuts. They are hunters and gatherers and they eat what they can find. Their menu is enormously varied.

They don’t live in one place permanently, but move where the food is depending on what season of the year it is. In northern Europe the last ice age is about to end. Enormous glaciers melt and the water flows over the northern globe. It becomes warmer, and in what today we call the Middle East, things grow better than ever. It becomes more fertile.

About 12,000 years ago some hunter-gatherer groups find a grass whose seed they can eat, and they find so much of it that they decide to stay and harvest as much as they can. The name of this grass is wild wheat. This grass, wheat will change the whole of human history. Humans continue to hunt and gather, but stay for longer periods where wheat grows. In just a couple of weeks a family can collect so much wheat it lasts for a year.

Wheat lasts forever, if it is dry. They build huts to store it in. For about 2,000 years humans live a good life in this area. They have plenty of wheat, and there’s lots of fruits and berries in the woods, and animals they can hunt. But happiness does not last forever.

The ice has melted but the climate becomes colder and drier again. Places where wheat used to grow now become desert, and there are far fewer animals to hunt. To survive they need to find a way to get food. Someone figures out that maybe they could take some of the leftover wheat grains and put them in the soil. They’ve noticed that some of the wheat grains become grass in storage.

They dig holes in the ground, plant the wheat grains and water them. Hurray! The grass is growing. They have become farmers! They have just started what later will be known as the agricultural revolution.

Once again the climate becomes warmer and rainfall increases, which is ideal for agriculture. The people who first invent farming live here, which has been named The fertile crescent. But this is not the only place where people start to farm. At approximately the same time, people in China start to plant millet, and on the island Papua New Guinea people start to put Taro in the ground. In India they grow millet and rice, and in South America farmers in Peru start to grow pumpkins.

With agriculture, humans become resident for real for the first time in human history. The fields need water, and they need to be looked after so that wild animals don’t eat the plants. People start to build houses close by the fields. At about the same time as people start to plant, they also start keeping animals. Humans have kept dogs for a long time but now when they become resident they start to keep sheep, goats, pigs, and cows.

It’s a lot of work keeping animals, they need food and water. Fences have to be put up, to protect the animals and make sure they don’t trample or eat what has been planted. Keeping animals might be a lot of work, but it does have advantages. Animals are a live store of meat if hunting is not good. Sheep, goats, and cows produce milk, and from milk you can make cheese and yoghurt.

From the animals’ hides and wool you can make clothes and rugs. Agriculture changed humans’ way of living in many ways. This is called the Agricultural Revolution.