The farming revolution
See how planting seeds led to villages, property, crowd diseases and kings, and learn the four questions this course asks of every turning point.
BEFORE
A world of foragers
For almost all of our species' history, every human was a forager: hunting, fishing and gathering wild plants. People lived in small bands of a few dozen, moved with the seasons, and owned only what they could carry. There were no villages, no fields and no kings.
A band that knows hundreds of plants and animals has a varied diet and nothing much to steal. It also cannot grow large, because wild land only feeds so many people.
WHAT CHANGED
People began to plant and herd
Around 10,000 BCE, people in the Fertile Crescent (an arc from the eastern Mediterranean through to the Zagros foothills of today's western Iran) began growing wheat and barley and herding goats and sheep. Within a few thousand years farming also began independently in China (rice and millet), Mexico (maize), the Andes, New Guinea and parts of Africa.
Why then? The last ice age was ending. The climate became warmer, wetter and more stable, which made it worth staying near good stands of wild grain, and then worth helping them grow.
Check yourself
Neda reads that farming appeared separately in at least half a dozen regions, all within a few thousand years of the ice age ending. What is the most reasonable conclusion?
- One brilliant group invented it, and the idea then travelled to every other region
- A shared condition, the warmer climate, made farming worthwhile in many places
- It is pure coincidence, so there is nothing to explain
- Humans suddenly became more intelligent around 10,000 BCE
Show the answer
A shared condition, the warmer climate, made farming worthwhile in many places
Yes. When the same thing happens in unconnected places at a similar time, look for a cause they share. Here that is the warmer, steadier climate.
Surplus
Food produced beyond what the producers need to eat right now, and that can be stored. Grain keeps for years in a dry pit or jar. Wild berries and fresh meat do not.
A family that harvests more barley than it eats has something entirely new: a store that can feed a potter, a priest or a soldier who grows nothing.
The chain that followed
- Fields tie you down
You cannot walk away from a crop you planted. People settle, build solid houses and storage.
- More food, more children
Settled mothers can raise children closer together, and a hectare of wheat feeds far more people than a hectare of wild land. Population climbs.
- Surplus frees some hands
Not everyone has to produce food. Specialists appear: potters, weavers, builders, priests.
- Stores need guarding and sharing out
Whoever controls the granary has power. Inequality, property, inheritance and, in time, rulers and taxes follow.
Check yourself
Sort each result of the Agricultural Revolution
- Many more people fed from the same land
- Illnesses passing from herds to crowded villages
- Full-time potters, builders and weavers
- Famine when the one main crop fails
- A narrower diet and more tooth decay
- Stored food to get through a bad winter
Show the answer
What it gave (Benefits): Many more people fed from the same land, Full-time potters, builders and weavers, Stored food to get through a bad winter
What it cost (Consequences): Illnesses passing from herds to crowded villages, Famine when the one main crop fails, A narrower diet and more tooth decay
Was the farmer better off?
The species
A clear win in numbers. Farming let the human population grow from a few million to hundreds of millions, and made towns, crafts and writing possible.
The individual
Often a loss at first. In many regions the skeletons of early farmers are shorter than those of the foragers before them, with worn joints, more tooth decay and signs of hunger in childhood.
Check yourself
Match each find to what it tells an archaeologist
Show the answer
- Wheat ears that hold their grain → The plants were being farmed, not gathered
- Deep storage pits beside thick-walled houses → People stayed in one place with a surplus
- Shorter skeletons with decayed teeth → Health fell for many early farmers
- A few graves far richer than the rest → Wealth had become unequal
A door that only opens one way
Nobody voted for farming. Each step was small: tend a wild patch, stay a little longer, store a little more. But each step fed more mouths, and a valley holding ten times more people cannot go back to foraging without most of them starving. Where the analogy breaks: the door was not shut everywhere. Some groups mixed farming and foraging for thousands of years, and a few gave farming up.
Check yourself
Foragers switched to farming because they could see it would give each of them an easier, healthier life.
Show the answer
False
False. The evidence points the other way for many early farmers: harder work and worse health. Farming spread because it supported more people, not happier ones, and once numbers grew there was no way back. Big changes are often the unplanned sum of small, sensible steps.
Where you still meet it
- Most of the calories on Earth still come from a handful of plants first farmed back then: wheat, rice, maize, barley, potatoes.
- Owning land, inheriting it and paying tax on it are all ideas that only make sense after farming.
- Living close to animals and to each other is still how new diseases reach us.
- The habit to keep: when someone calls a change 'progress', ask progress for whom, and at what cost?
Check yourself
Kaveh says: 'Farming was obviously a good idea. That's why everyone took it up.' Which reply uses the evidence best?
- No one chose it. Small steps fed more people, who then could not go back
- It was good for everyone from the start; the shorter skeletons that turn up are just chance
- It was a bad idea that kings forced on people
- Foragers were too few to matter, so the question is pointless
Show the answer
No one chose it. Small steps fed more people, who then could not go back
Exactly. It won on numbers, not on comfort, and kings came long after the first fields. 'Everyone did it' does not prove 'it was better for everyone'.
Lesson recap
- Around 10,000 BCE, as the ice age ended, farming began independently in several parts of the world.
- Storable surplus led to settlement, population growth, specialists, property and rulers.
- It was a win for human numbers and often a loss for the individual farmer's health and freedom.
- Ask of any turning point: what came before, why then, who paid, and how do we know?