Neolithic Age - Sedentary Life - Agricultural Revolution

The Neolithic or New Stone Age (10,000 to 8,000 years ago) pertains to a stage of culture following the Paleolithic and is characterized by the use of polished stone implements, development of permanent dwellings, cultural advances such as pottery making, domestication of animals and plants, the cultivation of grain and fruit trees, and weaving. The change from hunting/gathering to primitive farming appears so abrupt that this technological change is often characterized as the  Neolithic Revolution.

Anthropologists and archaeologists disagree as to why and how it happened, but evidence indicates that at the end of the last Ice Age, an ecological crisis may have triggered the transition to food production. The Ice Age was coming to an end, and temperatures were warming very quickly. Homo sapiens were engaged in an economic, cultural lifestyle called foraging – "hunting and gathering" which is what it sounds like – our early ancestors hunted, trapped, and killed animals, while others gathered and prepared wild plants.  Their goal was to provide enough food for themselves and their children. These hunter-gathers needed to be mobile; they set up temporary camps, lived there for a while, and moved on when the food supply began to dwindle. For mobility, tribal units composed of small bands of 30 to 50 people worked hard to secure food for themselves and their children. Because of the climate conditions and animal migrations, food was scarce, and starvation was always just one step away. People had little time to do anything other than hunt for food, keep warm, and find shelter for themselves and their families.

Cooperation was one of the most important trademarks of humans and gave them a crucial edge over other species. In foraging societies, food was provided by both the males and females, whereas in agricultural societies it is the men had the burden of supplying food -- hunting.  These foraging societies were more egalitarian, or equal than agricultural societies, which were patriarchal, or male-dominated.  There was greater equality between sexes during the pre-agricultural period, disparities, or inequalities, also existed in wealth within the societies. Archeologists believe this to be true because they have discovered, varying quality of graves in pre-agricultural excavation sites. 

Approximately 10,000 years ago, some societies were domesticating plants and animals -- the start of a transition from foraging to farming. Humans identified and cultivated certain grasses, such as oats, wheat, and barley, which provided nourishment to larger groups of people.

Watch the video: Neolithic Agriculture 

Humans were discovering that certain animals, such as goats, sheep, cattle, and pigs, had temperaments and dispositions that made them easy to manage within proximity to their dwellings. The people of the Neolithic Age learned how to train animals to be useful to humans. The training of animals is called domestication. The shift to agriculture and the domestication of animals coincided with advances in stone tool technology; the invention of pottery enabled people to store, transport, and cook foods; and people made cloth from flax and wool. The advent of agriculture led to an overall increase in the world’s population density and allowed humans to begin to settle in one place and develop sedentary lifestyles. 

Agriculture ushered in the Neolithic Age as food became available in relative abundance for the first time in thousands of years. This new lifestyle, described by archaeologists as the Natufian culture, began to emerge in the Middle East. The Natufian culture (known as Epipaleolithic peoples, who survived from the end of the Paleolithic Period into early postglacial times) were the earliest farmers based on the original discovery of carved bone and stone tools, artwork, and other cultural remains. From the new lifestyle practices came the idea of clearing a whole area (by fire, for example) and planting the whole area with plants. People could move on to hunt and gather foods elsewhere and, hopefully, when they returned to that area, they would find lots of foods growing. In hunter-gatherer societies, women need a gap of at least three to four years between children. No such limitation existed for people living in permanent settlements, and so it became possible for women to give birth to more children. The development of agriculture and pastoralism practices took place over a long period and helped to produce large surpluses of food and improve the quality of life for our ancestors.

Watch the video: Neolithic - New Stone Age

Dating from about 9000 BCE, the Natufians, mainly hunters, supplemented their diet by gathering wild grain; they had sickles of flint blades set in straight bone handles for harvesting grain and stone mortars and pestles for grinding it. Some groups lived in caves, others occupied emergent villages, and buried their dead with their ornaments in cemeteries. As the Natufians developed new agriculture and pastoralism (animal husbandry) practices, agricultural communities were less subject to the whims of nature than hunter-gatherers and had a higher chance of survival.

By 7000 BCE, agriculture and animal husbandry were the dominant occupations in the Middle East, and it was already taking hold in Northern African and Southern Europe. The change that took place because of agriculture and pastoralism were enormous, and with food surplus, people had more time to do other things.  Domesticating animals and farm crops required constant care, Neolithic farmers stayed in one location and built permanent dwellings.