Transition to Farming: Differing Perspectives
Introduction
Have you heard of the “Paleo” diet? It means eating only foods that hunters and foragers ate thousands of years ago. The diet is based on an idea. It is that our ancestors were healthier before the spread of farming.
Health experts still question if the Paleo diet works. Historians are asking an even bigger question, though. Why did humans begin farming? The foods people ate during the Stone Age were good enough, right? Then why did humans everywhere start farming and eating new foods?
Well…they didn’t. Farming spread slowly and unevenly. Experts are still trying to understand the when, where, how, and why of the change. They are studying the good and bad results.
When, where, and how did farming happen?
There’s no rule that said farming had to happen. It was one of many different possibilities. Yet, at some point, in many different areas, it happened. People started collecting plants and raising animals. We are not even sure if farming began on purpose. Many scholars think that farming was an accident, as people dropped pieces of wild grains near their homes while preparing food. When these grains produced more grains, people got the idea to keep it going. Farming probably happened slowly and in stages.
It’s commonly thought that southwest Asia was the first place where farming developed. However, some scholars think it developed independently in a few different places. Either way, it began about 10,000 to 6,000 years ago.
Agriculture then spread when farmers moved around the world. The farmers traded across networks. Tools, plants, animals, and agricultural ideas were traded along these networks.
So what did farming change?
Farming changed many things. It changed how humans organized their communities, networks, and health.
Farming meant people could live in one place with their families. They no longer had to move around with a large group. Family homes became the center of life. The home was where the things people needed were made, traded, and used.
Over time, farmers made enough food to feed their families and others in their community. People could buy or trade for their food. They no longer had to work to make their own. Instead they became merchants, craftspeople, or kings. Work was divided up based on what a person did for a living. This led to a social hierarchy. In a hierarchy, different groups of people are ranked above or below one another based on what they do. This system led to inequality. Women often worked raising children and in the home.
The change to farming communities also caused diseases to spread more easily. Diseases moved from animals to humans more often. It happened because they lived so close together.
People moved into villages, some of which joined networks or grew into large cities. This made networks both shrink and expand. For instance, the network of a farmer in a small village might grow in number of people that he met, like neighbors and people at the markets, but it would shrink as he stayed only within a small area. Traders, by contrast, would have more connections from different places like the next farming community, village, or empire. So, a trader’s network would grow.
Why farm?
Farming seems to have been both good and bad. So why was it adopted so far and wide? Why work more and have worse health? Why live in a crowded community where people are unequal?
Well, it’s not as though early farmers said yes or no to farming. They did not list out all the good and bad things about it. It developed slowly.
Historians think there are many possible reasons why farming spread. The main one is that the environment changed. Naturally-occurring climate change dried up many areas that used to be good for hunting. People stopped going to those areas. Instead they settled in river valleys where farming made sense.
Was it better?
Before the mid-1900s, historians thought the switch to farming was good in every way. Farming was a way out of the hard life of hunting. Newer studies go against that story, though.
Some studies say that foragers had an easy life. They worked less and were mostly healthy. They treated each other as equals. They had fewer diseases. They had more free time. Meanwhile, settled farmers worked more. They had less healthy diets and lived in dirty cities.
These are very different points of view. It’s just not a simple question. Some experts say that farming was a good thing in the end. It was worth it even with things like inequality and disease. Without it, we wouldn’t have things like writing. We wouldn’t get to enjoy things like books, laws, or religions.
Others point out that life really wasn’t that happy for foragers. Sure, they had fewer diseases. They were also more likely to die early, though.
We do not have a clear answer. We now have a more complete picture though. It’s not that foragers had bad lives. They were not totally happy and healthy, either. Farmers had cities, but they also had diseases. The switch to farming completely changed networks and how things were made. It had its good and bad sides. What people thought of as work and what people wanted and needed totally changed. It was a very big change, and a very important one.
Sources
Arnaud, Bernadette. “First Farmers—Archaeology Magazine Archive.” Accessed May 10, 2019. https://archive.archaeology.org/0011/abstracts/farmers.html
Barker, Graeme, and Candice Goucher, eds. The Cambridge World History Volume 2: A World with Agriculture, 12,000 BCE–500 CE. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511978807
Barnard, A. “Contemporary Hunter-Gatherers: Current Theoretical Issues in Ecology and Social Organization.” Annual Review of Anthropology 12, no. 1 (October 1, 1983): 193–214. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.an.12.100183.001205
Bowles, Samuel, and Jung-Kyoo Choi. “Coevolution of Farming and Private Property during the Early Holocene.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110, no. 22 (May 28, 2013): 8830–35. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1212149110
Broushaki, Farnaz, Mark G. Thomas, Vivian Link, Saioa López, Lucy van Dorp, Karola Kirsanow, Zuzana Hofmanová, et al. “Early Neolithic Genomes from the Eastern Fertile Crescent.” Science 353, no. 6298 (July 29, 2016): 499–503. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaf7943
Christian, David. Maps of Time An Introduction to Big History. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2011.
Cohen, Mark Nathan. Health and the Rise of Civilization. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989.
Cohen, Mark Nathan, and Gillian Margaret Mountford Crane-Kramer, eds. Ancient Health : Skeletal Indicators of Agricultural and Economic Intensification. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2007.
Colledge, Sue, James Conolly, Bill Finlayson, and Ian Kuijt. “New Insights on Plant Domestication, Production Intensification, and Food Storage: The Archaeobotanical Evidence from PPNA Dhra‘.” Levant 50, no. 1 (January 2, 2018): 14–31. https://doi.org/10.1080/00758914.2018.1424746
Peterson, Jane. “Domesticating Gender: Neolithic Patterns from the Southern Levant.” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 29, no. 3 (September 1, 2010): 249–64. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2010.03.002
Finlayson, Bill, Steven J. Mithen, Mohammad Najjar, Sam Smith, Darko Maričević, Nick Pankhurst, and Lisa Yeomans. “Architecture, Sedentism, and Social Complexity at Pre-Pottery Neolithic A WF16, Southern Jordan.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108, no. 20 (May 17, 2011): 8183–88. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1017642108
American Friends of Tel Aviv University. “First Evidence of Farming in Mideast 23,000 Years Ago: Evidence of Earliest Small-Scale Agricultural Cultivation.” ScienceDaily. Accessed May 10, 2019. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150722144709.htm
Gallagher, Elizabeth M., Stephen J. Shennan, and Mark G. Thomas. “Transition to Farming More Likely for Small, Conservative Groups with Property Rights, but Increased Productivity Is Not Essential.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 112, no. 46 (November 17, 2015): 14218–23. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1511870112
Goodale, Nathan, Heather Otis, William Andrefsky, Ian Kuijt, Bill Finlayson, and Ken Bart. “Sickle Blade Life-History and the Transition to Agriculture: An Early Neolithic Case Study from Southwest Asia.” Journal of Archaeological Science 37, no. 6 (June 1, 2010): 1192–1201. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2009.12.017
Goring-Morris, A. Nigel, and Anna Belfer-Cohen. “Neolithization Processes in the Levant: The Outer Envelope.” Current Anthropology 52, no. S4 (October 1, 2011): S195–208. https://doi.org/10.1086/658860
Gross, Michael. “The Paradoxical Evolution of Agriculture.” Current Biology 23, no. 16 (August 19, 2013): R667–70. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2013.08.001
Gurven, Michael, and Hillard Kaplan. “Longevity Among Hunter- Gatherers: A Cross-Cultural Examination.” Population and Development Review 33, no. 2 (2007): 321–65. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1728-4457.2007.00171.x
Gutierrez, Juan Antonio Mazon. “New Discoveries in Architecture and Symbolism at Jerf El Ahmar (Syria), 1997–1999.” Neo-Lithics. Accessed May 10, 2019. https://www.academia.edu/3188538/New_discoveries_in_architecture_and_ symbolism_at_Jerf_el_Ahmar_Syria_1997_1999
Henry, Donald O. From Foraging to Agriculture : The Levant at the End of the Ice Age. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989.
Hill, Kim, A. M. Hurtado, and R. S. Walker. “High Adult Mortality among Hiwi Hunter-Gatherers: Implications for Human Evolution.” Journal of Human Evolution 52, no. 4 (April 2007): 443–54. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2006.11.003
Kaplan, David. “The Darker Side of the ‘Original Affluent Society.’” Journal of Anthropological Research 36, no. 3 (Autumn, 2000): 301-324.
Keeley, Lawrence H. War before Civilization. Edited by Lawrence H. Keeley. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Kuijt, Ian, ed. Life in Neolithic Farming Communities: Social Organization, Identity, and Differentiation. Fundamental Issues in Archaeology. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, 2000.
———. “Home Is Where We Keep Our Food: The Origins of Agriculture and Late Pre-Pottery Neolithic Food Storage.” Paléorient 37, no. 1 (2011): 137–52. https://doi.org/10.3406/paleo.2011.5444
———. “Material Geographies of House Societies: Reconsidering Neolithic Çatalhöyük, Turkey.” Cambridge Archaeological Journal 28, no. 4 (November 2018): 565–90. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959774318000240
———. “People and Space in Early Agricultural Villages: Exploring Daily Lives, Community Size, and Architecture in the Late Pre-Pottery Neolithic.” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 19, no. 1 (March 1, 2000): 75–102. https://doi.org/10.1006/ jaar.1999.0352
Kuijt, Ian, and Bill Finlayson. “Evidence for Food Storage and Predomestication Granaries 11,000 Years Ago in the Jordan Valley.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106, no. 27 (2009): 10966–10970. https://doi.org/10.1073/ pnas.0812764106
Kuijt, Ian, and Nigel Goring-Morris. “Foraging, Farming, and Social Complexity in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic of the Southern Levant: A Review and Synthesis.” Journal of World Prehistory 16, no. 4 (2002): 361–440.
Kuijt, Ian, Emma Guerrero, Miquel Molist, and Josep Anfruns. “The Changing Neolithic Household: Household Autonomy and Social Segmentation, Tell Halula, Syria.” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 30, no. 4 (December 1, 2011): 502–22. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2011.07.001
Mazoyer, Marcel. A History of World Agriculture: From the Neolithic Age to the Current Crisis. Edited by Laurence Roudart. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2006.
Reilly, Kevin. The West and the World : A History of Civilization. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener, 2007.
Sahlins, Marshall. Stone Age Economics. Chicago: Aldine-Atherton, 1972.
Scanes, Colin G. “Chapter 4—Hunter–Gatherers.” In Animals and Human Society, edited by Colin G. Scanes and Samia R. Toukhsati, 65–82. Academic Press, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-805247-1.00004-6
———. “Chapter 6—The Neolithic Revolution, Animal Domestication, and Early Forms of Animal Agriculture.” In Animals and Human Society, edited by Colin G. Scanes and Samia R. Toukhsati, 103–31. Academic Press, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-805247-1.00006-X
Ullah, Isaac I. T., Ian Kuijt, and Jacob Freeman. “Toward a Theory of Punctuated Subsistence Change.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112, no. 31 (August 4, 2015): 9579–84. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1503628112
Watkins, Trevor. “Architecture and ‘theatres of Memory’ in the Neolithic of Southwest Asia.” Rethinking Materiality: The Engagement of Mind with the Material World, January 1, 2004, 97–106.
Wright, Katherine I. (Karen). “Domestication and Inequality? Households, Corporate Groups and Food Processing Tools at Neolithic Çatalhöyük.” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 33 (March 1, 2014): 1–33. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. jaa.2013.09.007
Eman M. Elshaikh
The author of this article is Eman M. Elshaikh. She is a writer, researcher, and teacher who has taught K-12 and undergraduates in the United States and in the Middle East. She teaches writing at the University of Chicago, where she also completed her master’s in social sciences and is currently pursuing her PhD. She was previously a World History Fellow at Khan Academy, where she worked closely with the College Board to develop curriculum for AP World History.
Image credits
This work is licensed under CC BY 4.0 except for the following:
Cover: UNSPECIFIED—CIRCA 1997: Egyptian civilization, New Kingdom, Dynasty XVIII. Agricultural work in the fields. Wall painting from the Tomb of Unsu at west Thebes. © DEA PICTURE LIBRARY/De Agostini via Getty Images
Area of the fertile crescent, circa 7500 BC, with many farming villages from Neolithic period. By GFDL, CC BY-SA 3.0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertile_Crescent#/media/File:Fertile_crescent_Neolithic_B_circa_7500_BC.jpg
Foundation of a family dwelling in Jericho. By A. Sobkowski, public domain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jericho#/media/ File:Jerycho8.jpg
Ad Deir Monastery at Petra is a monumental building carved out of rock in the ancient Jordanian city of Petra. © CM Dixon / Heritage Images / Getty Images.
Articles leveled by Newsela have been adjusted along several dimensions of text complexity including sentence structure, vocabulary and organization. The number followed by L indicates the Lexile measure of the article. For more information on Lexile measures and how they correspond to grade levels: www.lexile.com/educators/understanding-lexile-measures/
To learn more about Newsela, visit www.newsela.com/about.
The Lexile® Framework for Reading evaluates reading ability and text complexity on the same developmental scale. Unlike other measurement systems, the Lexile Framework determines reading ability based on actual assessments, rather than generalized age or grade levels. Recognized as the standard for matching readers with texts, tens of millions of students worldwide receive a Lexile measure that helps them find targeted readings from the more than 100 million articles, books and websites that have been measured. Lexile measures connect learners of all ages with resources at the right level of challenge and monitors their progress toward state and national proficiency standards. More information about the Lexile® Framework can be found at www.Lexile.com.