The Agricultural… Revolution?

Once upon a time, our ancestors hunted animals for food, and foraged for plants they could eat. Life was nomadic, and each day was a quest for sustenance.

But then, something remarkable began to unfold. Gradually, across various corners of the world, these hunter-gatherers started to unravel the secrets of their environment. They learned to cultivate plants and domesticate animals, transforming from wanderers into settlers.

This newfound skill of controlling their food source allowed people to build sturdier homes and form protective communities, laying the foundations for civilization as we know it.

From that point forward, there was no turning back.

This seemed to happen all over the world at once, everywhere, around 10,000 years ago. Among the very first animals bred for food was the humble goat.

Or so the story goes.

The story of the Agricultural Revolution often painted in broad strokes, suggests a simultaneous global awakening to the art of farming around 10,000 years ago. The planet was warming up from the last ice age, and plants began to grow wildly, in more areas.

The narrative implies a rapid, worldwide shift from the nomadic lifestyle of hunting and gathering to the sedentary practice of agriculture.

It also implies a one-way street, where a group decides to learn to farm and then never reverts back to our “primitive ways.”

This simplified view overlooks the nuanced and varied evolution of human societies. Archaeological evidence increasingly reveals that pre-agricultural societies exhibited complex social organizations, challenging the idea that agriculture was the sole gateway to societal development.

Modern humans have been around for hundreds of thousands of years. Does anyone really think that nobody figured out that seeds grow into plants until around 10,000 years ago? Furthermore, our prehistoric ancestors were every bit as smart as we are today, but without TikTok. I’m pretty confident they planted seeds in some spots and returned to them when they could (or when they needed to).

As agriculture became more developed, many communities appear to have deliberately chosen between foraging and farming, or even combined aspects of both, depending on what best suited them. Our ancestors were not mere passive recipients of technological advancements. Instead, many of them were active decision makers.

The journey towards agricultural life was not a one-size-fits-all process! Instead, it varied widely across different regions. Variations in environmental conditions, cultural traditions, and unique social dynamics led to diverse approaches to farming and domestication.

The Fertile Crescent is often considered the birthplace of agriculture, with the earliest signs from around 10,000 BCE. Wheat and barley were grown, and goats and sheep were domesticated. It was perhaps fortuitous that Mesopotamia had an abundance of easily domesticable plants and animals.

The Americas, by contrast, had a very different transition period. Maize cultivation in Mesoamerica emerged around 7000 years ago, and potato cultivation in the Andes around 5000 years ago (very rough dates!). Llamas were the only animal that ended up being suitable for domestication, and only in South America.

Over in China, the cultivation of rice in the Yangtze River Basin and millet began perhaps 8000 years ago. These practices were tailored to the region's wet, marshy environment, illustrating a distinct agricultural evolution.

Sub-Saharan Africa witnessed a different pattern of agricultural development. The domestication of crops like sorghum and yams began around 7000 years ago, with a variety of agricultural practices emerging in response to the region's diverse climates.

The transition to agricultural life was no simultaneous global phenomenon. Instead, it was a patchwork of localized transitions, each unfolding in its unique context of time and space. This diversity in agricultural development challenges the notion of a singular, global agricultural revolution, revealing a more nuanced and multifaceted history of human societies' evolution.

Agriculture is pretty much always equated with the advent of civilization. Evidence of sophisticated hunter-gatherer societies, which thrived without agriculture, draws this narrative into question. Complex social structures, art, and technology were far from exclusive to agricultural communities.

Recognizing the varied paths to agriculture also means appreciating our ancestors' agency. They were not merely swept along by the tides of technological innovation but were intelligent and adaptable decision-makers, actively shaping their destinies.

Hopefully, it’s clear by now that our prehistory is not a simple narrative of “advancement” or “progress.” It's a complex series of events, some more isolated and some more interwoven, influencing one another to varying degrees.

It’s not as though there was a moment when the entire world decided to shift to farming all at once, and farming wasn’t always a permanent solution, a one-way street. Instead, we see that thoughtful, intelligent humans built Göbekli Tepe before the advent of agriculture.

As we unravel the complex threads of our prehistoric past, we find that a lot of the assumptions we had baked into us when we were kids are wrong. I can’t get enough of thinking about them, and how we came to be.

What are some “sacred cows” you learned growing up that proved to be inaccurate or misguided? Share with me in the comment today!