In 1953, author L.P. Hartley wrote, “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” Hartley was correct in many ways—when historians study the past, it’s as though they’re visiting another place. The further back you go, the more different things look, and yet sometimes we find surprising similarities with our ancestors’ way of life.

The way we get our food is a great example of how much our lives have changed. Electric refrigeration, supermarkets and instant ramen were not invented until the early to mid-1900s. Of course, you could buy fresh food before this, but it had to be grown nearby.

If you went back 2,000 years to the Roman Empire or Han Dynasty China, everyday life would look somewhat familiar. For example, most people bought their food from farmers and animal herders who raised animals for their meat, eggs, and milk. But if you traveled back 4,000 years, you’d find a lot fewer similarities to today. Pretty much everyone got their food by foraging and hunting. For the first 96 percent of human existence—between 250,000 years ago and 10,000 years ago—that’s what all people did. Very, very few do so today.

In this unit, we’ll ask the question, “Why aren’t most of us still foragers today?” To find the answer, you’ll explore how people across the world eventually became farmers. This shift was one of several major changes that saw humans learn to communicate more effectively. They began to migrate around the world, many settling down to produce their own food for the first time.

Humans as a divergence

Many thousands of years ago, there were several species, or kinds, of humans. Today, there is only one human species, called Homo sapiens. Modern Homo sapiens evolved first in Africa, probably between 300,000 and 250,000 years ago. Around 70,000 years ago, our ancestors started moving to other parts of the world. They would eventually migrate to every continent except Antarctica. On their migrations, they met other species of humans, including Homo neanderthalensis (Neanderthals).

Archaeologists used to think humans arrived in North America around 3,000 years ago. Today, we know that it was tens of thousands of years earlier. As humans spread to new areas, they developed new ways to deal with changing environments. These changes might have helped our ancestors develop new ways to think, communicate, and use tools.

Our foraging ancestors were physically like us. Their brains were as advanced as ours, and they came up with new tools and ideas. And, about 70,000 years ago, a big change allowed Homo sapiens to out-compete other human species. This change is known as the cognitive revolution. Cognition is the way we gather and understand information. The cognitive revolution happened slowly, but it allowed Homo sapiens to develop symbolic language. Symbolic language is the use of words to represent objects and ideas. This development allowed Homo sapiens to communicate better and cooperate in larger numbers than other human species.

Humans are the only species that have symbolic language. We can speak or write about the past, present, and future. We create mythical creatures and discuss ideas. Symbolic language is also the key to a process called collective learning. This is the ability to share and preserve knowledge that builds over generations. Some researchers believe that symbolic language improved our ability to tell stories. Telling stories and the ability to pass those stories on to many people across generations—is what allowed our species to spread across the globe.

Foragers

One benefit of Homo sapiens’ new cognitive skills was the ability to change. As they spread around the world, foragers had to learn to find new resources for food.

Foraging communities were generally small. Their food sources were usually not large enough to feed big, settled communities. They were nomadic, moving when they needed food and seasons changed. It’s believed communities were more egalitarian, where everyone was treated equally. The few possessions they had were probably widely shared. They also may have had lots of time to relax and be social, or so many scholars think. While we can’t be entirely sure how accurate these characterizations are, we do know that when some foraging societies began to farm animals, things changed dramatically.

Farmer revolution

About 12,000 years ago, humans in many parts of the world began adopting changes that led to farming. First, some began growing wild plants. Then, around 10,000 years ago, humans began to domesticate both plant and animal species. This means they selected the best ones and actively helped them to grow. Because these groups of humans had new daily tasks, their tools changed. New kinds of farming equipment were developed. We see this in the archaeological record in the form of different types of stone tools, such as hoes, adzes, and grinding stones. An adze is a type of axe-like tool. These tools give us the name for these communities—Neolithic, meaning New Stone Age.

It’s not entirely clear how these changes developed, though the process was certainly difficult and took a long time—thousands of years in some regions. And it didn’t necessarily always happen in the same way. Consider why some diets are based on roasting and others on boiling; some on noodles and others on breads. It’s because groups had different food resources available to them and used different tools. Once groups started to farm, agriculture was hard to give up because it provided a lot more food and fed larger populations than foraging could.

Was farming a good idea?

But was switching from foraging to farming a good idea? Scholars can’t agree. Some point out that early farmers had more food than foragers. But farmers also suffered worse nutrition, more diseases, and more physically demanding work. There are also disagreements about how many people really became farmers during this period. Almost everyone today eats food grown on farms and ranches, but throughout the period covered in Unit 2, most people probably remained foragers. Some only herded animals and didn’t grow any crops. Several early farming societies also continued to hunt and gather for food.

By the end of this period, the shift to farming had triggered many huge changes. Farming allowed people to build permanent settlements. The populations of these communities grew quickly, some becoming villages and cities. Farming societies needed more workers and more ways to control workers, which led to the creation of governments or ruling groups. Agricultural societies often produced enough extra food, called surplus. This allowed people to specialize in other kinds of work or jobs. Ideas about the world and forms of worship changed.

These changes created problems and opportunities. Many societies developed similar plans for dealing with them, but there were also great differences between regions.

As you consider the evidence about different agricultural and foraging societies in this unit, it’s your job to ask the hard questions. Why did farming develop first in some places? How did the development of farming change the history of humanity? Why were there different pathways and choices that societies around the world made, rather than just one pattern? What can we learn about ourselves by studying the lives of our foraging ancestors? These questions help us understand the earliest humans.