The Development of Agriculture: How and Why?

1. Quaestio:How and Why did humans develop agriculture when they did? Nunc Agenda: Return to your groups from yesterday to complete the paleolithic peoples gallery walk

2. Quaestio:How and Why did humans develop agriculture when they did? Flow Chart: Working Using your knowledge from the homework reading, Complete the flow chart working as a group

3. Under what kind of circumstances would hunter-gatherers switch to agriculture?

4. Farming: Why did it happen? • Textbooks often teach that farming started when some people one day figured out that plants grow when you plant seeds, and then suddenly people decided to farm • This is a simplistic view that insults the intelligence of early humans, as they knew the environment well and knew how plants grew. So why did they wait to start farming?

5. 3 Things to Know Before We Start • Neolithic Revolution: Transition of human populations from nomadic hunting and gathering to sedentary (settled) agriculture starting around 8,300 BCE • Agriculture was made possible through the process of Domestication = selective breeding of plants and animals to make them more useful for humans • It did not happen overnight, it did not happen to all people at one time, and it probably did not happen by choice. Over thousands of years, agriculture spread to different human populations.

6. Paleolithic Age • During the Paleolithic Age (Old Stone Age), humans lived in small bands as nomadic hunter-gatherers, traveling from place to place to follow herds of wild animals and collect wild plants • During this period, the world experienced several glacial cycles as part of the Ice Age, with glacial ice sheets at times extending from the poles over the northern regions of North America and Eurasia • This limited human habitation and made weather unpredictable

9. The Natufians • The Pleistocene Epoch (the “Ice Age”) did not end all at once, but went through several fluctuations between warm and cold before entering the Holocene Epoch. • 12,000 BCE, the world began to warm, glaciers shrank, and the climate of Southwest Asia (Middle East) became warmer, wetter, and more stable • The Natufians, hunter-gatherers in the Levant, on the Mediterranean coast, lived near • grasslands full of gazelles and wild edible cereal grasses (grains) • oak and pistachio forests • the Mediterranean Sea full of fish

12. The Natufians • Resources were so abundant that they stopped being nomadic and became sedentary (settled in one place) simply because they could, but they were still hunting and gathering • Reliable food source and sedentary life allowed massive population growth for Natufians

19. Younger Dryas Event • BUT THEN, around 11,000 BCE (at least according to one theory) all the way in Canada, melting glaciers caused an overflow of fresh water into the Atlantic, disrupting the ocean currents that brought warm water toward Europe • This caused the warming of Earth’s climate to reverse (Younger Dryas Event), with the planet cooling down again for about 1000 years, bringing ice back to Europe, and creating dry conditions in Southwest Asia • Forests shrank, less grass grew, and animals were fewer in number. It was becoming more difficult for anything to survive.

22. Cold Canadian Glacial Water Arctic Ocean REENACTMENT

31. Neolithic Age of Domestication • While some people returned to nomadic life, many of the Natufians chose instead to stay sedentary and try to survive by “lending nature a hand” • The climate started to improve again around 10,000 BCE, and by 8300 BCE, they had begun taking care of wild grasses, watering, fertilizing, and eventually planting to get more to grow • By 7500 BCE communities in Western Iran began to do the same with animals like goats and sheep, caring for herds, helping them get water and food, helping them breed

33. Neolithic Age of Domestication • Picked the plants/animals with best qualities to reproduce, like obedient goats and stronger wheat that would not drop its seeds naturally • This process is called Domestication = selective breeding of plants and animals to make them more useful for humans

34. Teosinte grass was domesticated by selecting for large kernels until it became corn (maize)

35. Dogs were domesticated by picking the friendliest and most obedient wolves

42. Global Revolution • Agriculture developed independently in many places around the world, and continued to spread • Early farmers were STILL Hunter-Gatherers, and they used farming first as a supplement • However, the need to remain near crops and livestock lead to settled communities that would evolve into the first cities and civilizations

45. Getting Settled • Many people began to adopt Settled Agriculture as a way of life, especially in fertile areas suitable for farming. Farmers now had to stay in one place because they could not leave their crops. • Two of the earliest known settled villages were found in ÇatalHüyük in modern day Turkey and Jericho in modern day Palestine.

48. The Grass is Always Greener… • 8,300 BCE- The Neolithic Revolution began with the domestication of plants and animals. • Some groups only domesticated animals and lived by Nomadic Pastoralism: a way of life, also known as Herding, in which people move from place to place in search of grassy pastureland for their herds • Often viewed as “uncivilized” by settled peoples