The way we live today, settled in homes, close to other people in towns and cities, eating food grown on farms and with leisure time to learn, explore and invent is all been made possible by the Neolithic revolution, which is thought to have begun about 12,000 years ago. It forever changed how humans live, eat, and interact, paving the way for modern civilization. The way we live today is directly related to the advances made in the Neolithic Revolution.
Learning objectives
What is the Neolithic Revolution?
In the 1920s, the Australian archaeologist, Vere Gordon Childe suggested the term ‘Neolithic revolution’ to describe the dramatic shift made by stone age people from nomadic, hunter-gatherer behavior to a settled, agricultural way of life, during the Neolithic period. It was the first of a series of agricultural revolutions in human history.
Early humans before the Neolithic Revolution lived in small nomadic communities. Certain prehistoric humans started to make their own innovations regarding tools, domesticating animals, and growing plants for use, which would in turn allow them to start living in villages, or larger groups.
The Neolithic Revolution started around 10,000 BC in the Fertile Crescent, a boomerang-shaped region of the Middle East where humans first took up farming. Soon after, humans in other parts of the world also began to practice farming. Thus, the “Neolithic Revolution” was a series of revolutions that occurred at different times in different places.
Before the Neolithic revolution, humans were hunter-gatherers roaming the world foraging for their food. But then a dramatic shift occurred, and the foragers became farmers, transitioning from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to a more settled one.
Prehistoric humans started to develop their control over fire, which allowed for different uses soon. One of these uses of fire was the early stages of pottery. Humans began to dry clay for uses around the household. Hunting also became much easier to accomplish with the introduction of new stone tools. The most common stone tools used were daggers and spear points for hunting, hand axes for cutting meats, and scrapers for cleaning animal hides.
With the development of agriculture, technology, and the inventions of more sophisticated tools used in agriculture, humans began to grow crops in the surrounding area. Inventions such as the plow helped in the planting of seeds. One essential benefit of the development of farming technology was the possibility of producing surplus crops or food supplies that surpassed the immediate needs of the community. Civilizations and cities grew out of the innovations of the Neolithic Revolution.
Causes of the Neolithic Revolution
There was no single factor that led humans to begin farming roughly 12,000 years ago. The causes of the Neolithic Revolution vary from region to region.
Around 14,000 years ago at the end of the last Ice Age, the Earth began to get warmer. Everywhere the transition is marked by the domestication of various plant and animal species – depending on the species locally available, and influenced by local culture. The people must have seen the relationship between the cultivation of grains and an increase in population. The domestication of animals provided a new source of protein, through meat and milk, as well as allowed production of clothing, through hides and wool.
There are a variety of hypotheses as to why humans stopped foraging and started farming.
Some scientists theorize that climate change drove the Neolithic Revolution. In the Fertile Crescent, bounded on the west by the Mediterranean Sea and on the east by the Persian Gulf, wild wheat and barley began to grow as it got warmer. Pre-Neolithic people called Natufians started building permanent houses in the region.
Other scientists suggest that intellectual advances in the human brain may have caused people to settle down. Some believe that the population pressure may have caused increased competition for food and the need to cultivate new foods; people may have shifted to farming in order to involve elders and children in food production.
Regardless of how and why humans began to move away from hunting and foraging, they continued to become more settled. The Neolithic Revolution began when some groups of humans gave up the nomadic, hunter-gatherer lifestyle completely to begin farming. It may have taken humans hundreds or even thousands of years to transition fully into a farming community.
Effects of the Neolithic Revolution
The ability to acquire food on a regular basis changed life: there were more stability and order. Life developed according to special patterns, seasons. Aspects of nomadic life were given up.
Agricultural life afforded securities that nomadic life could not, and farming in one place resulted in population growth far beyond that of hunters and gatherers. Soon after plant domestication began, animal domestication followed. The raising of cattle, sheep, and pigs for food replaced the necessity of daily hunting. The creation of stone tools also helped to advance the making of clothing. It was now possible to sheer wool and spin it into yarn to make more advanced clothing that made for better protection against the weather.
Humans started farming cereal grains like barley. Afterward, they moved on to protein-rich foods like peas and lentils. Food production increased as people learned new ways of producing and storing more food. A key change was people started to build permanent houses for protection and storing food.
A surplus of food emerged. This freed some people from having to spend all their time producing food. They could learn other skills. Specialization in diverse forms of new labor began. Artisans made weapons and jewelry. Specialty products could be made that were not available to nomadic people. Surplus of food could be sold for later use, or possibly traded with other communities for other necessities or luxuries. Neolithic communities came in contact with other communities around them. This led to the development of merchants and traders. Social class was determined by occupation, with farmers and craftsmen at the lower end, and priests and warriors at the higher.
According to the traditional view, as the humans shifted to agricultural food production, it led to an increase in population, the formation of larger sedentary communities, accumulation of goods and tools, and specialization in diverse forms of new labor. As there were more resources available, there was a rapid increase in population size.
With the development of larger societies, different means of decision making and governmental organization developed. Research studies indicate that it was in the Neolithic period that gender differences first appeared which meant male domination in later periods of history. Gender roles changed, hunters and gatherers assigned similar roles to men and women. In the Neolithic revolution, the work that produced food became relegated to men, and household chores became the women’s job. Men came to be the dominant gender in society.
Compared to hunter-gatherers, Neolithic populations generally had poorer nutrition, shorter life expectancies, and a more labor-intensive lifestyle than hunter-gatherers. Diseases and infections jumped from animals to humans.
To summarize
