L.P. Hartley was a writer. In 1953, he wrote, “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” The past can seem like another world. The further back in time you go, the more different things look. And yet, sometimes we find surprising similarities with the way our ancestors lived.

Where our food comes from is a great example of how life has changed. Humans didn’t have electric fridges until the early 1900s, for example. Supermarkets weren’t invented until then either. You could buy fresh food before this, of course, but it had to be grown nearby.

If you went back 2,000 years to the Roman Empire or Han Dynasty China, you’d notice some familiar activities. Most people bought food from farmers and animal herders. But if you traveled back 4,000 years, life looked very different. Pretty much everyone got their food by foraging. Foragers move around, hunting and gathering wild foods. Until around 10,000 years ago, that’s what all people did. Very, very few do so today.

Why aren’t most of us still foragers today? In this unit, we’ll look at why most people across the world became farmers. The shift to farming was one of many major changes in how human societies developed.

Humans as a divergence

Modern humans are the species known as Homo sapiens. These humans evolved first in Africa. This was probably around 250,000 years ago. Around 70,000 years ago, humans slowly started moving to other parts of the world. They would migrate to every continent except Antarctica.

Scientists used to think humans arrived in North America 3,000 years ago. Today, we know it was tens of thousands of years earlier. As humans spread to new areas, they had to learn new ways of life. These changes might have helped our ancestors develop new ways to communicate and use tools.

Early Homo sapiens looked like us. Their brains were as developed as ours. About 70,000 years ago, Homo sapiens underwent a slow but major change. This is known as the cognitive revolution. Cognition refers to the way we learn and think. The cognitive revolution helped Homo sapiens become smarter than other human species.

The cognitive revolution helped humans create symbolic language. Symbolic language uses words or symbols to communicate. Only humans use symbolic language. We can speak or write about the past, present, and future. We make up stories and share knowledge. Language is important to another process called collective learning. Collective learning means sharing knowledge over time. Telling stories—and passing those stories down through generations—is what allowed our ancestors to spread across the world.

Foragers

These new developments in thinking helped in other ways, too. As humans traveled around the world, they encountered new foods. Humans were able to learn how to find food in new environments.

Foraging communities were generally small. They were also nomadic, meaning they moved regularly. Often, they moved to find food. Resources were likely shared among community members. They also may have had lots of time to relax, or so many scholars think. We can’t be entirely certain that life was how we think it was back then. But we do know that when some foraging societies began to farm animals, life changed dramatically.

Farmer revolution

Humans began to raise plants and animals around 12,000 to 10,000 years ago. They began selecting the best ones and helping them grow. Different types of stone tools were invented. These tools included hoes and grinding stones. That’s why these communities are called Neolithic, or New Stone Age.

The move from foraging to farming was very slow. This change happened over thousands of years in some places. Different regions had different food resources. People also developed different tools. Farming also provided a lot more food and fed more people than foraging could.

Was farming a good idea?

But was switching from foraging to farming a good idea? Early farmers had more food than foragers. But farmers got sick more and worked harder. We also don’t know how many people really became farmers during this period. Just about everyone today eats food grown on farms. But during the period covered in Unit 2, most people probably remained foragers. Some only herded animals and didn’t grow their own plants. And these early farming societies likely kept hunting and gathering.

By the end of this period, the shift to farming had allowed many huge changes. Farming communities grew in size because there was more food. Small communities became villages and cities. People also created governments to manage people and resources. Soon, there was enough food that people could do jobs besides farming. Their ideas about the world and religion changed.

As you work through Unit 2, consider the following questions. Why did farming develop first in some places? How did farming change human history? Why did societies around the world make different choices, rather than following one pattern? What can we learn about ourselves by studying the lives of our foraging ancestors? These questions help us understand the earliest humans.