AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION

Livelihood before Agriculture 

The discovery of agriculture is the phenomenon with the greatest impact on human societies prior to the Industrial Revolution some two hundred years ago. Before agriculture, the primary occupations of human beings in the Stone Age were hunting, fishing, and gathering. The first human societies probably resulted from big-game hunting, which required collaboration among able-bodied males. With various weapons of wood and stone, the hunting bands killed wild game like reindeer and bear in Europe, bison and caribou in North America, and mammoth and rhinoceros in Africa and Asia. Men did most of the hunting and fishing, while women gathered fruits, nuts, berries, tubers, and roots, and reared children.

Primitive pastoralism was also prevalent before agriculture; wild herd animals like antelopes and dogs were domesticated as early as twenty thousand years ago. Because most human beings at that time were nomadic hunters and herdsmen, the first domesticated dogs were used as tamed hunting packs. Gradually, human beings began to domesticate other useful animals like sheep (for wool), cow and goat (for milk, hide, and flesh), hog (for flesh), chicken and duck (for eggs and flesh), and bull, camel, donkey, and horse (as beasts of burden and transportation).

Shift to Agriculture 

Agriculture began in the Neolithic (or New Stone) Age, when human beings, having selected certain species of plants, domesticated them, and cultivated them on a large scale about ten thousand years ago. This ushered in what the historian V. Gordon Childe has termed as the Neolithic Revolution. Remember, though, that the so-called Agricultural Revolution was a slow and incomplete process, occurring sporadically and independently at different times in different regions of the world. Scholars once thought that a rise in population stimulated the first agricultural production. And, of course, we now know that agriculture on a limited scale was known to pastoralists and even hunters long before the Agricultural Revolution.

The reason for the breakthrough to widespread agriculture can only be guessed. Agriculture may have been introduced on a large scale when people learned how to control the environment so that wild, high-yielding, seed-bearing grasses--forebears of modern wheat, rice, maize, and barley--could be grown artificially. Only by clearing forests before cultivation was this possible: deforestation saved crops from weeds, and subsequently, protected grown crops from grazing animals and grain-eating birds.

Agriculture: Why and Where? 

If the prehistoric food-collectors were nomadic, and almost always migratory, why was there a shift from food-gathering to food-growing? Although they knew the basic principles of agriculture, they had little incentive to produce food. They were accompanied by families and surviving comfortably from foraging and hunting amid the abundance of plants and animals. The protein-rich diet that the hunter-gatherers consumed provided enough calories for their healthy survival. And high-yielding crops that can be cultivated (whether grasses like wheat, or tubers like potato, or legumes like bean) represent a tiny minority of all species of known plants. Finally, food production meant sedenterization (settling down at one place of residence) and coping with consequent problems--like waste removal--which might not be attractive to free-living nomads.

Most scholars now agree that agriculture first occurred in regions where domesticated animals provided meat, milk, wool, and the like--important articles of consumption that insured sustenance when the risk of crop-cultivation was undertaken. As plants yielded more food than hunted animals, and domesticated animals grew bigger by rearing, nomads began to spend less time as food-collectors (hunter-gatherers), and more as food-producers (agriculturists and stock-raisers). Later, when these nomads settled into new farming practices, they formed simple peasant villages.

Places of Origin of Farming 

Some theorists believe that, on a widespread basis, agriculture first originated in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) and Mesoamerica (modern Mexico), and later dispersed to other parts of the world. Others maintain that agriculture originated at different times in ancient history but at various places across the world. However, scholars do agree about the definite independent origins of agriculture in Mesopotamia (9500 B.C.E.) and Mesoamerica (7000 B.C.E.).

In Mesopotamia, barley, oat, rye, and wheat were first grown, together with beet, carrot, date, grape, lentil, olive, onion, and pea. Animals like ass, camel, cattle, dog, goat, horse, pig, and sheep were also first domesticated there. In Mesoamerica, avocado, runner beans, cocoa, cotton, maize, sweet potato, red pepper, squash, tobacco, and tomato were first cultivated. The turkey was also first domesticated by the Mesoamericans.

Some scholars believe that north China (5000 B.C.E.) was also a probable site of independent origin of agriculture. In the Yangtze River valley, foxtail millet, mulberry, soybean, and tea were first farmed, and the silkworm was reared.

Different scholars claim that three other locales in the tropics--the northern Andes, the Niger basin, and Indo-China--may have had independent origins of agriculture. In the northern Andean Mountains, lima beans, peanuts, peppers, potato, squash, and tomato were farmed, while alpaca and llama were raised. In the Niger plain in western Africa, kola nut, watermelon, and yam were cultivated, and cattle was domesticated. And in Southeast Asia, banana, black pepper, eggplant, mango, rice, sugarcane, and yam were grown, while chicken, pig, and water-buffalo were domesticated.

Other centers of early plant and animal domestication were scattered throughout the world. For example, the North American Pueblos (between the Colorado and the Rio Grande rivers) grew tepary beans and sunflowers and raised turkey. Beans, cassava, pineapple, potato, and yam were farmed in the South American lowlands between the Orinoco and the Amazon deltas.

In Mediterranean Europe, cereals such as oat and rye, and citrus fruits such as grape and olive were farmed; cattle, goose, and pig were also bred. Further north, between the North and the White seas, the reindeer was domesticated; while in the steppes between the Carpathian Mountains and the Caspian Sea, the horse was tamed.

In arid southwestern Asia the one-humped Arabian dromedary camel became "the ship of the desert." In the central Asian steppes the wild two-humped Bactrian camel was first converted into a beast of burden, and the grassland nomads cultivated hardy crops and fodders like alfalfa, buckwheat, flax, and hemp. In Central Asia, the inhabitants grew almond, apple, lentil, pea, pear, and walnut; they domesticated camel and sheep. In the Himalayan Mountain regions the yak was domesticated; it now appears almost nowhere but the Pamir plateau.

Elsewhere, in the Nile Valley, cotton, millet, melon, sesame, and sorghum were raised, and the donkey reared. A little to the south and east, in the Horn of Africa region, coffee and okra were produced, and in the South Pacific islands, coconut was grown.

Routes of Spread of Agriculture 

From Mesopotamia, the cradle of agriculture, cultivation first spread to what is regarded as the Fertile Crescent--the arc extending from the Nile Valley, covering the coast of Israel and Lebanon, running southeast of the Taurus Mountains (in modern Turkey), and then sweeping south between the Tigris River (in modern Iraq) and the Zagros Mountains (in modern Iran). From this area agriculture radiated, through Anatolia (in modern Turkey) to Europe, through the Iranian plateau eastward to India and China, and through the Nile valley to the African savannas, and then across the rainforests, to southern Africa. From China, it is believed, agriculture spread to Southeast Asia, and thence to the Pacific Islands and to Australia.

In the western hemisphere, cultivation spread from the primary location of Mesoamerica to the Great Plains and the eastern coast of North America; it also moved to the South American lowlands, and later from the Andean region, eastward to the plains of Gran Chaco and the Pampas.

Much later, rice, bananas, and Asian yams found their way in ships across the Indian Ocean from Asia, through Java (in modern Indonesia) and Madagascar (modern Malagasy) to Africa.

Results of Spread of Farming 

The long-term diffusion of a variety of crops and techniques of farming led to the consolidation of the agricultural map of our planet into three predominant cereal zones. Thus the monsoon wet tropical lands in South, East, and Southeast Asia grow rice as their staple crop. Next, maize is the food crop in the dry tropical lands and highlands of the Americas. Finally, wheat is the principal grain grown in the cool temperate zone of Europe, and the warm temperate regions of West and Central Asia. These crops later provided the fundamental material basis of the civilizations that flourished in those regions.

From the description above, you might have the impression that agriculture supplanted such economic activities as hunting, gathering, and fishing. Actually, this was far from the case. At the early stages of the crop revolution, the majority of the people almost everywhere (and not only in the arid regions and grasslands) were nomadic herders who did not live a settled life. Although nomads were poorer than farmers, many hunter-gatherers and pastoralists persisted in their occupations.

Before long, frictions developed between members of these older occupations and the new agriculturalists. At a much later date, this conflict continued in many areas: the largest man-made structure, the Great Wall of China, was erected to protect the peasants of the river plains from barbarian invaders from the northern deserts and steppes. At the same time, herders and farmers cooperated, too, engaging in commercial interaction (mutual bartering of grains for animal products, for example).

Midway between the life-style of the farmer and the herder was that of the fisherfolk, who inhabited the river banks and the sea coasts. They were semisedentary because of the nature of their occupation. Not only living off their haul from the waters, they also cultivated starchy root crops (like cassava, parsnip, taro, and yam) in moist soil.

Popular Modes of Cultivation 

The most common implements of farming in prehistoric times were the plow, the hoe, the harrow, and the rake. Soon, farmers used yoked animals (like camel, cattle, etc.) to power plows and harrows.

The swidden or slash-and-burn method was the most primitive, but the most widespread method of early agriculture. Cultivators first cleared the trees and bushes by debarking and burning. In land thus cleared and enriched (by fresh ash), they sowed and harvested crops, after weeding, watering, and protecting it from herbivorous animals. After continuous cultivation for about five to six years, when the mineral nutrients of the soil would be depleted and the ground covered by wind-borne seeds like thistles and weeds, the peasants would abandon that clearing and move to another fresh spot to grow crops. Meanwhile, trees would grow back again at the first place. After some years they could return to farming there. This shifting method of cultivation, prevalent in Asia, Africa, and South America, is still popular in less-developed agricultural regions of the world.

Terrace agriculture was another common method of farming. On mountain or hill slopes, stone steps were built, soil piled up, and crops planted for lack of flat surfaces and to ensure protection from flash floods. The potato in the Andes, the grape in southern Europe, and the maize in northern China are even today mostly grown in terraced fashion.

The third important farming method is raised field agriculture. Strips of land in the shape of waist-high earthen platforms were dug out from canals. They were separated from one another and cultivated by running streams of water. This kind of system was first utilized in the Andean highlands, where the elevated platforms saved the crops from flooding, and the streams provided both irrigation (by capillary action) and fertility (by algae and planktons in them). The canals also were good reservoirs of fishes, thus promoting economic self-sufficiency of the local agricultural community.

Irrigated agriculture, however, was more prevalent in the river plains of Africa and Asia. Along the course of the Nile, the Euphrates, the Tigris, the Indus, and the Yellow rivers, irrigation helped develop and sustain settled villages, which expanded into populous and permanent societies, characterized by the sociologist Karl Wittfogel as "hydraulic societies." At the end of the Neolithic Age, these areas served as centers of what are known as riverine civilizations of ancient times.

Effects of Agricultural Revolution 

Crop cultivation led to a much greater availability of food, and, therefore, to a dramatic growth of population, both in terms of area of habitat and number. Cultivation may have led to some degree of population pressure on land, as an Egyptian contraceptive device suggests. From the Ebers papyrus, dated ca. 1500 B.C.E., we have the record of usage of vaginal plugs, made of lint, crushed acacia branches, and honey. Almost a corollary to the demographic expansion was the tribal political structure, based on social cohesion and hierarchy, which also emerged in most agricultural societies.

The racial balance of the continent of Africa was also affected in the long run: over the course of history, Negroid agriculturalists prevailed over the Pygmies, who were driven into the Congo forests, and the San or Bushmen, who were driven into the Kalahari Desert.

Last, but not least, the quality of life, too, progressed with the growth of settled life and culture. The potter's wheel was invented in Asia Minor (in modern Turkey) in ca. 6000 B.C.E., woven cloth in Sumer (in modern Iraq) in ca. 5000 B.C.E., writing (in the form of clay tablet maps) in Sumer in ca. 3800 B.C.E., wheeled carts in Sumer and Syria in ca. 3500 B.C.E., masonry dams in Egypt in ca. 2800 B.C.E., bronze works in southwestern Asia in ca. 2800 B.C.E., silk in China in ca. 2650 B.C.E., and the plow in Egypt in ca. 2500 B.C.E. These mechanical and artistic inventions enriched the lives of sedentary peoples, who enjoyed a degree of security, plenty, and leisure--the blessings of civilizations based upon agriculture.

Published in "History of Horticulture", 2002, Jules Janick, Purdue University, USA. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.