Neolithic Revolution

The Neolithic Revolution encompassed much more than just the introduction of various food production techniques. Cultivating large areas of land and erecting monumental works of art such as those at Göbekli Tepe required a level of labour that the small groups of nomadic hunter-gatherers who had hitherto dominated human prehistory could hardly have achieved on their own. Modern scientists such as Klaus Schmidt therefore assume that the period under discussion was also marked by the establishment of cross-group organizations. Small communities that had previously lived autonomously and often in competition with each other decided instead to cooperate, forming first alliances, some of which may have decided to settle down and build permanent villages close to their agricultural lands. In the following millennia, the most successful among them will have grown into city-states like Shuruppak mentioned in humanity's oldest written documents. These societies radically altered their natural environment through animal breeding, deforestation, cultivation of certain crops and irrigation. Other developments that began to spread are pottery, polished stone tools, and the change from round to rectangular dwellings. In many regions, agriculture enabled the production of food surpluses, which in turn resulted in rapid population growth, a phenomenon known as the Neolithic demographic transition. These developments are sometimes called the Neolithic package. Including earliest political alliances, they form the backdrop to an increasing division of labour, leading to the emergence of centralised administrations and specialised crafts, followed by hierarchical ideologies. In turn, there was an expansion of trade and military operations, development of depersonalised systems of knowledge (e.g. writing), aggregation of property and architecture in densely populated settlements, whose often monumental art primarily proclaim the power of the founders, depicting them as gods. . It was erected over the course of at least 1,500 years (approx. 50 generations) layer by layer like a tower towards heaven, so the oldest of these representations form its fundament.|320x320px Among the oldest known large-scale art in human history, erected between approximately 9,500 BP and at least 8,000 BP in northern Mesopotamia, are the numerous circular formations at Göbekli Tepe. Each of these monuments consists of a group of about eleven megalithic pillars, which, due to their distinctive features, are interpreted as symbolic male figures. The earliest written records, dated to , originate from the Sumerian civilisation, which reached the Bronze Age and emerged also in the Fertile Crescent. Initially, the records exclusively documented quantities of foodstuffs to be delivered, often signed with impressions of cylinder seals. Over the millennia, these simple signs were developed into a complex cuneiform script, enabling both the recording of myths (which until then had been passed down only orally) and the beginning of a more or less realistic approach to historiography. See the beginning of Mesopotamia's task-specific transformation into a fertile garden landscape by essentially three groups of gods, as described in the Atra-Hasis epic; also the list of rulers from allegedly some millennia before to after the Flood appearing in this context. ==Background==

Prehistoric hunter-gatherers had different subsistence requirements and lifestyles from agriculturalists. They lived in relatively small groups that were mostly very mobile (migratory), built only temporary shelters, and had limited contact with foreign communities. The self-sufficient economy of such groups explains their mutual competition for available resources. Territorial conflicts, as sometimes documented by the actors themselves, were therefore not uncommon in human prehistory, but Aristotle already assumed that humans naturally possessed the ability to form political alliances. Their highly evolved reasoning allowed Neolithic hunter-gatherer groups to cooperate with foreign communities based on an understanding of the advantages of such measures – and this "much earlier than science had previously believed." (Klaus Schmidt). Agriculture is another achievement of our reason. While human intelligence here just deals with the handling of other species in order to use them as food or beasts of burden, the establishment of political organisations entails the challenging task of learning to collaborate with alien groups of one's own kind, which can become far more dangerous to each other than any other predator. Various species demonstrate the ability to engage in a form of agricultural domestication (cf. aphid-herding ants), but only humans are capable of concluding treaties to regulate the coexistence of participating groups (cf. Sumer's Tablets of Destiny). In the event of a breach of such contracts, deadly conflicts threaten to erupt, as the struggles of our closest relatives in the primate kingdom show in a frighteningly human way. Without our highly developed thinking skills—deeply connected with the ability to exchange and coordinate ideas by using articulated sounds between the members of a group—they have no choice but to follow their territorial urge to fight. When a group has grown too large splits into two parties and there is no space for one of them to migrate by conquering an own new territory, the aggressive energy intended for this purpose begins to discharge itself as a ‘war’ between them, inevitably continuing until the weaker male party is completely wiped out. In analogous situations (local overpopulation), humans are presented with an option that has not existed in evolution until now. Due to their heightened consciousness, opposing groups of men can choose to establish treaties, agreeing to live in peace with their former enemies by adhering to the agreed-upon rules, and sharing the resources of a previously contested territory. In this regard, Aristotle's definition of Homo sapiens as zoon politikon (political animal) remains justified to this day. Agriculture and politics differ massively in terms of their content, which is why both likely introduced independently of one another, even if they mostly merged in the course of further demographic and civilisational development. Both represent adaptive measures designed to compensate for two different adverse living conditions (mere food shortages versus overpopulation crisis), without it being possible to determine with certainty which was introduced first. The initiation of agriculture by an already existing political organisation is no more strictly necessary than the reverse, but entirely conceivable that the culture of nomadic herders could easily have originated from the idea of a first hunting group feeding captured young animals grass to tame them and let them grow, thereby ensuring a constant supply of living meat. Creating first small gardens, which, due to their nature, favour settlement over nomadic herding, would be a parallel innovation, likely initiated by other groups of hunter-gatherers. Both directions of agriculture seem to have clashed significantly over the available areas in Mesopotamian's steppe 'Eden' (see also the biblical feud between Cain as the 'tiller of the ground' and Abel as the provider of meat); nevertheless, they reached a political agreement in the context of the later establishment of first city-states. According to current research, the first Neolithic Revolution began in Mesopotamia about 11.600 years ago. From there, it expanded via migration into immediately adjacent regions, displacing and/or assimilating the local hunter-gatherer cultures. This process is called Neolithisation, reaching northern Europe around 5500 BCE. Cross-group organisations founded by egalitarian communities may have existed there even before the introduction of agriculture, a conclusion that archaeologists like K. Schmidt and C. Renfrew have drawn from their cognitive‑archaeological calculations of the man-hours required for the construction of desert kites (kilometre‑long traps for catching entire wild animal herds) or megalithic buildings above a specified scale. An example for northern Europe is Stonehenge. The initially very simple structure of this monument: a circular earthen rampart or henge that encompassed an open mortuary ground (referring to Renfrew a Cause Away Camp), was repeatedly reconsidered, altered, and expanded over a period of 2000 years and more. Ultimately this creative process culminated in a version for which two fundamentally different types of material were used (Sarsen, a soft surface sandstone vs. Bluestones of hard deep rock) to erect two times two formations that are each identical in shape but arranged concentrically in tiers, whereby their menhirs also contrast in size, like the mythical giants and blue dwarfs. An archaeological interpretation suggests that these differences may symbolize two previously unrelated ethnics that encountered one another in southern England and, after initial conflicts, reached an agreement to unite under an overarching organization. Viewed in this light, the final version of Stonehenge represents a politically conceived work of art. It depicts two distinct populations that jointly administer the area and use their monument for two main purposes: internally as a gathering place, for example for council meetings or ceremonial rituals (promoting social cohesion), and externally as a means of intimidating surrounding rival tribes. (See also Renfrew’s hypothesis of a mutual 'arms race' to explaine the increasingly work-intensive megalithic structures built over time.) The nucleus of this monument consists of two arc-shaped formations which, unlike the two circles (excluding their environment equally on all sides) indicate a clear direction. The larger arc, with its 10 supporting Sarsen numerically only half as strong but truly gigantic, encompasses that of the blue 'dwars', both equipped with two additional menhirs on the monument’s axis aiming at the sun on the morning of summer solstice, just as this heavenly God (cf. Helios; Aton; Shamash) begins to emerge from behind the horizon. These formations have been interpreted in various ways. Alongside the thesis suggested by Thorpe: the larger arc with its menhirs as symbolic men could depict the leading team of a political organization (cf. Poseidon’s 10 sons as the ruling group on Atlantis), the prevailing view in science is that the clear targeting on the moment when the classical sky deity starts losing his power may be linked to a calendar marking the beginning of the harvest season in an agrarian society. Renfrew supplements this picture with his assumption that the creators of the megalithic monuments must have lived in “egalitarian” group relationships—a thesis he bases on the average of 9 men and 8 women died per generation (about 30 years) and were laid together without any indication of rank differences in the large communal burial mounds of southern England. The amazing monument of Stonehenge appears to have undergone no further constructive changes since about 1400 BC; on the contrary, there are traces of deliberate destruction, as archaeology often records when foreign cultures displaces the previous ones. Around the same time, the custom of communal burial came to an end; in its place, individual tombs for single rulers began to appear (chieftains, priest‑kings, such as the pharaohs in their pyramids), which bear witness to a distinctly non‑egalitarian power hierarchy. Apart from that, the megalith culture in the south of this island reached the Bronze Age around 3000 BC as evidenced by the tin mine in Cornwall and the proven trade of its metal as far as the Aegean. Centres of Neolithic Revolution have been discovered in various archaeologically locations worldwide; they emerged independently of one another and at different times, though always within the current geological epoch. The most recent Neolithizations happened in the last 300 years in connection with the discovery and subsequent colonization of Australia, the Americas and polar regions of our planet, still ongoing in the depths of the Amazon rainforest. Communities living there as Stone Age hunter-gatherers (the women often parallel create simplest of gardens) were and are wiped out or introduced to the achievements of our modern civilisation within a few decades. Shift from egalitarian to hierarchical relationships The need to plan and coordinate the argriculturuan communities' food production, manpower and resource allocation encouraged the division of labour, gradually leading to the emergence of specialised professions within increasingly complex societies. Migration, military conquests, diplomacy, and trade in surplus goods brought agrarian cultures into contact with outsiders, regardless of whether these were small foraging societies remaining self-sufficient (see the rebellious herd of alleged animals around beast-man Enkidu), allready settled cross-group organizations, or nomadic tribes of ‘predatory’ horsemen. Cultures that were in some cases very strange encountered each other, separately developed traditions, languages and narratives about the world's creation became mixed. Knowledge was exchanged, and thinkers attempted to create uniform cosmogonies or metaphysical systems contributing to the rise of civilisations, philosophy and technological advancements. Traditionally entrenched hierarchies between superior and inferior groups are difficult to assume among the egalitarian social associations of hunter-gatherers who founded first politically organisations (proto-states, primordial polis) such as that of the three male groups around Enlil, Anu, and Enki. Together with their seven divine wombs of Ninḫursaga, this organization is described in Sumerian myths not only as originator of agriculture and of the first human couples in the landscape of “Eden”, but also as the one responsible for the catastrophic deluge that later became known as the Flood. Both narratives—the Atrahasian original no less than its biblical echo—tell of the gods’ attempt to destroy humanity, their wayward creation; yet only the former one speaks of humans who were made in order to pacify a political conflict among the gods and to serve them as subservient laborers. It is difficult to verify the historical authenticity of this story; certainty only that various myths reveal the pattern of creating artificial humans and/or arranging their mating, always with the aim of subduing rebellious groups. (See the manufacture of Pandora in response to Prometheus’s breach of contract; Plato’s dismemberment of the spherical humans into weak individuals; Enkidu’s separation from his group through Shamkat’s seduction). Whether fictional or not, the epic Atra-Hasis tells of the introduction of slavery in Eden – of humans reduced to ‘working cattle’, as ultimate expression of a hierarchical relationship between mental powerless creatures and intellectually superior groups of gods. Leaving aside the question of how the pantheon of these distinctly anthropomorphic creators came to be singularised and abstracted into the infallible as well as almighty superpower of monotheistic religion, it is evident that the increasingly specialized division into governing “thinkers” and executing “workers” over time can initiate an ever more power imbalance. This phenomenon of documented shifts in social relations (including supportive ideologies) is linked to the emergence and growth of initially simple cross-group organisations into modern nations. As such, politics can be distinguished from advancements in the domain of pure technology, including animal and plant breeding, metallurgy, and so forth. Physical health The diet of hunter-gatherers was and remains well-balanced though heavily dependent on what the environment could provide each season. In contrast, cultures that had already established the cultivation of calorie-rich crops were able to produce food surpluses, enabling population growth that would have been impossible under a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. However, food abundance did not necessarily correlate with improved health. Reliance on a very limited variety of staple crops can adversely affect health even while making it possible to feed more people. A prime example of this is maize, which was domesticated in the Americas at the dawn of the Neolithic Revolution there. It is rich in starch but a poor source of iron; it also supplies insufficient amounts of essential amino acids such as lysine and tryptophan. Other factors that likely began to affect the health of early farmers as well as their livestock include the exchange of parasites, damaging bacteria, and viruses between both sides of this relationship. Originally evolutionarily adapted to their specific host, these pathogens jumped to the other species, leading to the emergence of previously unknown diseases. Increasingly densely populated areas, with their accumulation of human and animal waste, represent another source of infection by contaminated food and water supplies. Fertilizers and irrigation may have increased crop yields but also would have promoted proliferation of bacteria in the local environment while grain storage attracted additional insects and rodents. ==Agricultural transition==

The term 'neolithic revolution' was invented by V. Gordon Childe in his book Man Makes Himself (1936). Childe introduced it as the first in a series of agricultural revolutions in Middle Eastern history, calling it a "revolution" to denote its significance, the degree of change to communities adopting and refining agricultural practices. and perhaps 8000 BCE in the Kuk Early Agricultural Site of Papua New Guinea in Melanesia. Everywhere, this transition is associated with a change from a largely nomadic hunter-gatherer way of life to a more settled, agrarian one, with the domestication of various plant and animal species – depending on the species locally available, and influenced by local culture. Archaeological research in 2003 suggests that in some regions, such as the Southeast Asian peninsula, the transition from hunter-gatherer to agriculturalist was not linear, but region-specific. ==Domestication==

Crops Once agriculture started gaining momentum, around 9000 BP, human activity resulted in the selective breeding of cereal grasses (beginning with emmer, einkorn and barley), and not simply of those that favoured greater caloric returns through larger seeds. Plants with traits such as small seeds or bitter taste were seen as undesirable. Plants that rapidly shed their seeds on maturity tended not to be gathered at harvest, therefore not stored and not seeded the following season; successive years of harvesting spontaneously selected for strains that retained their edible seeds longer. tools in the flint workshops of the Beqaa Valley in Lebanon. Suggested by James Mellaart to be older than the Pottery Neolithic of Byblos (around 8,400 cal. BP). Daniel Zohary identified several plant species as "pioneer crops" or Neolithic founder crops. He highlighted the importance of wheat, barley and rye, and suggested that domestication of flax, peas, chickpeas, bitter vetch and lentils came a little later. Based on analysis of the genes of domesticated plants, he preferred theories of a single, or at most a very small number of domestication events for each taxon that spread in an arc from the Levantine corridor around the Fertile Crescent and later into Europe. Gordon Hillman and Stuart Davies carried out experiments with varieties of wild wheat to show that the process of domestication would have occurred over a relatively short period of between 20 and 200 years. Some of the pioneering attempts failed at first and crops were abandoned, sometimes to be taken up again and successfully domesticated thousands of years later: rye, tried and abandoned in Neolithic Anatolia, made its way to Europe as weed seeds and was successfully domesticated in Europe, thousands of years after the earliest agriculture. Wild lentils presented a different problem: most of the wild seeds do not germinate in the first year; the first evidence of lentil domestication, breaking dormancy in their first year, appears in the early Neolithic at Jerf el Ahmar (in modern Syria), and lentils quickly spread south to the Netiv HaGdud site in the Jordan Valley. archaeologists found caches of seeds of each in quantities too large to be accounted for even by intensive gathering, at strata datable to 11,000 years ago. Some of the plants tried and then abandoned during the Neolithic period in the Ancient Near East, at sites like Gilgal, were later successfully domesticated in other parts of the world. Once early farmers perfected their agricultural techniques like irrigation (traced as far back as the 6th millennium BCE in Khuzistan), their crops yielded surpluses that needed storage. Most hunter-gatherers could not easily store food for long due to their migratory lifestyle, whereas those with a sedentary dwelling could store their surplus grain. Eventually granaries were developed that allowed villages to store their seeds longer. So with more food, the population expanded and communities developed specialized workers and more advanced tools. The process was not as linear as was once thought, but a more complicated effort, which was undertaken by different human populations in different regions in many different ways. (East Asia, about 15,000 years ago), sheep, goats, cows, and pigs. caravan in Algeria|thumb|right West Asia was the source for many animals that could be domesticated, such as sheep, goats and pigs. This area was also the first region to domesticate the dromedary. Henri Fleisch discovered and termed the Shepherd Neolithic flint industry from the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon and suggested that it could have been used by the earliest nomadic shepherds. He dated this industry to the Epipaleolithic or Pre-Pottery Neolithic as it is evidently not Paleolithic, Mesolithic or even Pottery Neolithic. The presence of these animals gave the region a large advantage in cultural and economic development. As the climate in the Middle East changed and became drier, many of the farmers were forced to leave, taking their domesticated animals with them. It was this massive emigration from the Middle East that later helped distribute these animals to the rest of Afroeurasia. This emigration was mainly on an east–west axis of similar climates, as crops usually have a narrow optimal climatic range outside of which they cannot grow for reasons of light or rain changes. For instance, wheat does not normally grow in tropical climates, just like tropical crops such as bananas do not grow in colder climates. Some authors, like Jared Diamond, have postulated that this east–west axis is the main reason why plant and animal domestication spread so quickly from the Fertile Crescent to the rest of Eurasia and North Africa, while it did not reach through the north–south axis of Africa to reach the Mediterranean climates of South Africa, where temperate crops were successfully imported by ships in the last 500 years. Similarly, the African Zebu of central Africa and the domesticated bovines of the fertile-crescent – separated by the dry sahara desert – were not introduced into each other's region. ==Centers of agricultural origin==

West Asia from . Reconstitution of Pre-Pottery Neolithic B housing in Aşıklı Höyük, modern Turkey. Use-wear analysis of five glossed flint blades found at Ohalo II, a 23,000-years-old fisher-hunter-gatherers' camp on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, Northern Israel, provides the earliest evidence for the use of composite cereal harvesting tools. The Ohalo site is at the junction of the Upper Paleolithic and the Early Epipaleolithic, and has been attributed to both periods. The wear traces indicate that tools were used for harvesting near-ripe semi-green wild cereals, shortly before grains are ripe and disperse naturally. Other sites in the Levantine corridor that show early evidence of agriculture include Wadi Faynan 16 and Netiv Hagdud. Jacques Cauvin noted that the settlers of Aswad did not domesticate on site, but "arrived, perhaps from the neighbouring Anti-Lebanon, already equipped with the seed for planting". In the Eastern Fertile Crescent, evidence of cultivation of wild plants has been found in Choga Gholan in Iran dated to 12,000 BP, with domesticated emmer wheat appearing in 9,800 BP, suggesting there may have been multiple regions in the Fertile Crescent where cereal domestication evolved roughly contemporaneously. The Heavy Neolithic Qaraoun culture has been identified at around fifty sites in Lebanon around the source springs of the River Jordan, but never reliably dated. East Asia (He et al., 2017) Agriculture in Neolithic China can be separated into two broad regions, Northern China and Southern China. It was the domestication centre for foxtail millet (Setaria italica) and broomcorn millet (Panicum miliaceum), with early evidence of domestication approximately 8,000 years ago, and widespread cultivation 7,500 years ago. Orange and peach also originated in China, being cultivated .) , and likely routes of early rice transfer (c. 3,500 to 500 BCE). The approximate coastlines during the early Holocene are shown in lighter blue. (Bellwood, 2011) There are two possible centres of domestication for rice. The first is in the lower Yangtze River, believed to be the homelands of pre-Austronesians and associated with the Kauhuqiao, Hemudu, Majiabang, and Songze cultures. It is characterized by typical pre-Austronesian features, including stilt houses, jade carving, and boat technologies. Their diet were also supplemented by acorns, water chestnuts, foxnuts, and pig domestication. The second is in the middle Yangtze River, believed to be the homelands of the early Hmong–Mien speakers and associated with the Pengtoushan and Daxi cultures. Both of these regions were heavily populated and had regular trade contacts with each other, as well as with early Austroasiatic speakers to the west, and early Kra-Dai speakers to the south, facilitating the spread of rice cultivation throughout southern China. During the 1st millennium CE, they also colonized Madagascar and the Comoros, bringing Southeast Asian food plants, including rice, to East Africa. Africa On the African continent, three areas have been identified as having independently developed agriculture: the Ethiopian highlands, the Sahel and West Africa. By contrast, agriculture in the Nile River Valley is thought to be related to migration of populations and to have developed from the original Neolithic Revolution in the Fertile Crescent. Many grinding stones are found with the early Egyptian Sebilian and Mechian cultures and evidence has been found of a Neolithic domesticated crop-based economy dating around 7,000 BP. Unlike the Middle East, this evidence appears as a "false dawn" to agriculture, as the sites were later abandoned, and permanent farming then was delayed until 6,500 BP with the Tasian culture and Badarian culture and the arrival of crops and animals from the Near East. Bananas and plantains, which were first domesticated in Southeast Asia, most likely Papua New Guinea, were re-domesticated in Africa possibly as early as 5,000 years ago. Asian yams and taro were also cultivated in Africa. Potatoes and manioc were domesticated in South America. In what is now the eastern United States, Native Americans domesticated sunflower, sumpweed and goosefoot . In the highlands of central Mexico, sedentary village life based on farming did not develop until the "formative period" in the second millennium BCE. New Guinea Evidence of drainage ditches at Kuk Swamp on the borders of the Western and Southern Highlands of Papua New Guinea indicates cultivation of taro and a variety of other crops, dating back to 11,000 BP. Two potentially significant economic species, taro (Colocasia esculenta) and yam (Dioscorea sp.), have been identified dating at least to 10,200 calibrated years before present (cal BP). Further evidence of bananas and sugarcane dates to 6,950 to 6,440 BCE. This was at the altitudinal limits of these crops, and it has been suggested that cultivation in more favourable ranges in the lowlands may have been even earlier. CSIRO has found evidence that taro was introduced into the Solomon Islands for human use, from 28,000 years ago, making taro the earliest cultivated crop in the world. It seems to have resulted in the spread of the Trans–New Guinea languages from New Guinea east into the Solomon Islands and west into Timor and adjacent areas of Indonesia. This seems to confirm the theories of Carl Sauer who, in "Agricultural Origins and Dispersals", suggested as early as 1952 that this region was a centre of early agriculture. == Spread of agriculture ==

Europe Archaeologists trace the emergence of food-producing societies in the Levantine region of southwest Asia at the close of the last glacial period around 12,000 BCE, and developed into a number of regionally distinctive cultures by the eighth millennium BCE. Remains of food-producing societies in the Aegean have been carbon-dated to at Knossos, Franchthi Cave, and a number of mainland sites in Thessaly. Neolithic groups appear soon afterwards in the Balkans and south-central Europe. The Neolithic cultures of southeastern Europe (the Balkans and the Aegean) show some continuity with groups in southwest Asia and Anatolia (e.g., Çatalhöyük). Current evidence suggests that Neolithic material culture was introduced to Europe via western Anatolia. All Neolithic sites in Europe contain ceramics, and contain the plants and animals domesticated in Southwest Asia: einkorn, emmer, barley, lentils, pigs, goats, sheep, and cattle. Genetic data suggest that no independent domestication of animals took place in Neolithic Europe, and that all domesticated animals were originally domesticated in Southwest Asia. The only domesticate not from Southwest Asia was broomcorn millet, domesticated in East Asia.The earliest evidence of cheese-making dates to 5500 BCE in Kujawy, Poland. The diffusion across Europe, from the Aegean to Britain, took about 2,500 years (8500–6000 BP). The Baltic region was penetrated a bit later, around 5500 BP, and there was also a delay in settling the Pannonian plain. In general, colonization shows a "saltatory" pattern, as the Neolithic advanced from one patch of fertile alluvial soil to another, bypassing mountainous areas. Analysis of radiocarbon dates show clearly that Mesolithic and Neolithic populations lived side by side for as much as a millennium in many parts of Europe, especially in the Iberian peninsula and along the Atlantic coast. Carbon 14 evidence populations (5,500–4,900 calibrated BP) and modern Western Eurasian populations. The spread of the Neolithic from the Near East Neolithic to Europe was first studied quantitatively in the 1970s, when a sufficient number of Carbon 14 age determinations for early Neolithic sites had become available. In 1973, Ammerman and Cavalli-Sforza discovered a linear relationship between the age of an Early Neolithic site and its distance from the conventional source in the Near East (Jericho), demonstrating that the Neolithic spread at an average speed of about 1 km/yr. Considering that the movement of the people implies a consequent movement of their genes, it is possible to estimate the impact of these migrations through the genetic analysis of human populations. There is strong evidence for causal connections between the Near-Eastern Neolithic and that further east, up to the Indus Valley. There are several lines of evidence that support the idea of connection between the Neolithic in the Near East and in the Indian subcontinent. The prehistoric site of Mehrgarh in Baluchistan (modern Pakistan) is the earliest Neolithic site in the north-west Indian subcontinent, dated as early as 8500 BCE. Neolithic domesticated crops in Mehrgarh include more than 90% barley and a small amount of wheat. There is good evidence for the local domestication of barley and the zebu cattle at Mehrgarh, but the wheat varieties are suggested to be of Near-Eastern origin, as the modern distribution of wild varieties of wheat is limited to Northern Levant and Southern Turkey. A detailed satellite map study of a few archaeological sites in the Baluchistan and Khybar Pakhtunkhwa regions also suggests similarities in early phases of farming with sites in Western Asia. Pottery prepared by sequential slab construction, circular fire pits filled with burnt pebbles, and large granaries are common to both Mehrgarh and many Mesopotamian sites. The postures of the skeletal remains in graves at Mehrgarh bear strong resemblance to those at Ali Kosh in the Zagros Mountains of southern Iran. Despite their scarcity, the Carbon-14 and archaeological age determinations for early Neolithic sites in Southern Asia exhibit remarkable continuity across the vast region from the Near East to the Indian Subcontinent, consistent with a systematic eastward spread at a speed of about 0.65 km/yr. == Causes ==

The most prominent of several theories (not mutually exclusive) as to factors that caused populations to develop agriculture include: • The Oasis Theory, originally proposed by Raphael Pumpelly in 1908, popularized by V. Gordon Childe in 1928 and summarised in Childe's book Man Makes Himself. • The Hilly Flanks hypothesis, proposed by Robert John Braidwood in 1948, suggests that agriculture began in the hilly flanks of the Taurus and Zagros Mountains, where the climate was not drier as Childe had believed, and fertile land supported a variety of plants and animals amenable to domestication. • The Feasting model by Brian Hayden suggests that agriculture was driven by ostentatious displays of power, such as giving feasts, to exert dominance. This required assembling large quantities of food, which drove agricultural technology. • The Demographic theories proposed by Carl Sauer and adapted by Lewis Binford and Kent Flannery posit an increasingly sedentary population that expanded up to the carrying capacity of the local environment and required more food than could be gathered. Various social and economic factors helped drive the need for food. • The evolutionary/intentionality theory, developed by David Rindos and others, considers agriculture as an evolutionary adaptation of plants and humans. Starting with domestication by protection of wild plants, it resulted specialization of location and then complete domestication. • Peter Richerson, Robert Boyd, and Robert Bettinger make a case for the development of agriculture coinciding with an increasingly stable climate at the beginning of the Holocene. Ronald Wright's book and Massey Lecture Series A Short History of Progress popularized this hypothesis. • Leonid Grinin argues that whatever plants were cultivated, the independent invention of agriculture always occurred in special natural environments (e.g., South-East Asia). It is supposed that the cultivation of cereals started somewhere in the Near East: in the hills of Israel or Egypt. So Grinin dates the beginning of the agricultural revolution within the interval 12,000 to 9,000 BP, though in some cases the first cultivated plants or domesticated animals' bones are even of a more ancient age of 14–15 thousand years ago. • Andrew Moore suggested that the Neolithic Revolution originated over long periods of development in the Levant, possibly beginning during the Epipaleolithic. In "A Reassessment of the Neolithic Revolution", Frank Hole further expanded the relationship between plant and animal domestication. He suggested the events could have occurred independently during different periods of time, in as yet unexplored locations. He noted that no transition site had been found documenting the shift from what he termed immediate and delayed return social systems. He noted that the full range of domesticated animals (goats, sheep, cattle and pigs) were not found until the sixth millennium BCE at Tell Ramad. Hole concluded that "close attention should be paid in future investigations to the western margins of the Euphrates basin, perhaps as far south as the Arabian Peninsula, especially where wadis carrying Pleistocene rainfall runoff flowed." == Consequences ==

Social change Despite the significant technological advance and advancements in knowledge, arts and trade, the Neolithic revolution did not lead immediately to a rapid growth of population. Its benefits appear to have been offset by various adverse effects, mostly diseases and warfare. The introduction of agriculture has not necessarily led to unequivocal progress. The nutritional standards of the growing Neolithic populations were inferior to that of hunter-gatherers. Several ethnological and archaeological studies conclude that the transition to cereal-based diets caused a reduction in life expectancy and stature, an increase in infant mortality and infectious diseases, the development of chronic, inflammatory or degenerative diseases (such as obesity, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases) and multiple nutritional deficiencies, including vitamin deficiencies, iron deficiency anemia and mineral disorders affecting bones (such as osteoporosis and rickets) and teeth. Average height for Europeans went down from for men and for women to respectively, and it took until the twentieth century for average height for Europeans to return to the pre-Neolithic Revolution levels. The traditional view is that agricultural food production supported a denser population, which in turn supported larger sedentary communities, the accumulation of goods and tools, and specialization in diverse forms of new labor. Food surpluses made possible the development of a social elite who were not otherwise engaged in agriculture, industry or commerce, but dominated their communities by other means and monopolized decision-making. Nonetheless, larger societies made it more feasible for people to adopt diverse decision making and governance models. Jared Diamond (in The World Until Yesterday) identifies the availability of milk and cereal grains as permitting mothers to raise both an older (e.g. 3 or 4 year old) and a younger child concurrently. The result is that a population can increase more rapidly. Diamond, in agreement with feminist scholars such as V. Spike Peterson, points out that agriculture brought about deep social divisions and encouraged gender inequality. This social reshuffle is traced by historical theorists, like Veronica Strang, through developments in theological depictions. Strang supports her theory through a comparison of aquatic deities before and after the Neolithic Agricultural Revolution, most notably the Venus of Lespugue and the Greco-Roman deities such as Circe or Charybdis: the former venerated and respected, the latter dominated and conquered. The theory, supplemented by the widely accepted assumption from Parsons that "society is always the object of religious veneration", argues that with the centralization of government and the dawn of the Anthropocene, roles within society became more restrictive and were rationalized through the conditioning effect of religion; a process that is crystallized in the progression from polytheism to monotheism. Subsequent revolutions Andrew Sherratt has argued that following upon the Neolithic Revolution was a second phase of discovery that he refers to as the secondary products revolution. Animals, it appears, were first domesticated purely as a source of meat. The Secondary Products Revolution occurred when it was recognised that animals also provided a number of other useful products. These included: • hides and skins (from undomesticated animals) • manure for soil conditioning (from all domesticated animals) • wool (from sheep, llamas, alpacas, and Angora goats) • milk (from goats, cattle, yaks, sheep, horses, and camels) • traction (from oxen, onagers, donkeys, horses, camels, and dogs) • guarding and herding assistance (dogs) Sherratt argued that this phase in agricultural development enabled humans to make use of the energy possibilities of their animals in new ways, and permitted permanent intensive subsistence farming and crop production, and the opening up of heavier soils for farming. It also made possible nomadic pastoralism in semi arid areas, along the margins of deserts, and eventually led to the domestication of both the dromedary and Bactrian camel. and slower growth in childhood , and studies have consistently found that populations around the world became shorter after the transition to agriculture. This trend may have been exacerbated by the greater seasonality of farming diets and with it the increased risk of famine due to crop failure. Throughout the development of sedentary societies, disease spread more rapidly than it had during the time in which hunter-gatherer societies existed. Inadequate sanitary practices and the domestication of animals may explain the rise in deaths and sickness following the Neolithic Revolution, as diseases jumped from the animal to the human population. Some examples of infectious diseases spread from animals to humans are influenza, smallpox, and measles. Ancient microbial genomics has shown that progenitors to human-adapted strains of Salmonella enterica infected up to 5,500 year old agro-pastoralists throughout Western Eurasia, providing molecular evidence for the hypothesis that the Neolithization process facilitated the emergence of Salmonella entericia. In concordance with a process of natural selection, the humans who first domesticated the big mammals quickly built up immunities to the diseases as within each generation the individuals with better immunities had better chances of survival. In their approximately 10,000 years of shared proximity with animals, such as cows, Eurasians and Africans became more resistant to those diseases compared with the indigenous populations encountered outside Eurasia and Africa. Jonathan C. K. Wells and Jay T. Stock have argued that the dietary changes and increased pathogen exposure associated with agriculture profoundly altered human biology and life history, creating conditions where natural selection favoured the allocation of resources towards reproduction over somatic effort. ==Comparative chronology==