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Prologue
The men climb high above the ground¸ lopping off small branches with their stone–bladed axes. The women and children gather up the foliage and pile it around the bare tree trunks. It is hard¸ backbreaking work that goes on for days on end¸ as the farmers watch the brazen sky for thunderclouds and signs of rain. A few spits of rain and building clouds bring hope of imminent showers. The people fire the tinder–dry brush¸ which burns fiercely. The sky fills with dense brown smoke as far as the eye can see¸ as the women turn over the fresh ash into the cleared soil and plant their precious seed. Then everyone waits for the life–giving rains to conjure bright green shoots from the soil.
It is sometimes hard for us to image¸ buying our food from supermarkets¸ that for more than 99 percent of our existence as humans we were hunters and gatherers¸ tied to the seasons of plant foods¸ the movements of game¸ and the ebb and flow of aquatic resources. Food production¸ the deliberate cultivation of cereal grasses and edible root plants¸ is a phenomenon of the last 12¸000 years of human existence. Agriculture and animal domestication ("food production") were a major turning point in human history¸ the foundation for all early civilizations and¸ ultimately for our own modern industrial world. Before describing the development and spread of farming¸ we must examine some of the major theories that explain this development and review some of its consequences. Also¸ we must describe the intensification of hunter–gather societies that came immediately after the Ice Age.
Serious discussion of the origins of food production began in the 1930s. Australian born archaeologist Vere Gordon Childe was an eccentric genius¸ who regarded artifacts and archaeologist sites as the equivalent of historical documents and actual characters on the ancient world stage. Childe's main claims to fame were an encyclopedic knowledge of the clay and metal tools of Europe and southwestern Asia¸ and a priceless ability to write popular accounts of the prehistoric past. To Childe¸ southwestern Asia¸ from Turkey to the Nile Valley and Mesopotamia¸ was the cradle of both farming and early civilization. In his famous syntheses of the origins of civilization¸ he wrote of two great revolutions in the early human past. An Agriculture (or Neolithic (New Stone Age) Revolution resulted from the development of village farming following a few thousand years later by the Urban Revolution and the beginnings of cities¸ writing¸ metallurgy¸ and literate civilizations
The notion of an Agricultural and Urban Revolution appealed to historians like George Trevelyan and Will Ariel Durant¸ who adopted Gordon Childe's revolutions for the early chapters of their widely read world histories. The revolutions were convenient labels¸ just like the Industrial Revolution we talk about today. To archaeologist¸ the Agricultural Revolution is a simplistic designation long outdated by a flood of new field data unavailable in Childe's day. However¸ the term does have merit in the sense that it draws attention to a catalytic development in the human past and¸ above all¸ to its consequences. Animal and past domestication had awesome consequences for all humankind—new economies and great interdependence¸ permanent settlement¸ and more complex social organization¸ accelerating population growth¸ and increasing social inequality—to mention only a few.
