ABSTRACT
We are complacent about the role of farming in our lives today, but Brian Fagan has called the emergence of farming “one of the catalytic events of human prehistory.”1 About 10,000 years ago, humans developed agriculture, and began to move away from hunting and gathering. Over the past 50 years, several key ideas have dominated the discussion of the origin and spread of agriculture in the Ancient world. The emergence of farming has been extolled as the great event that catapulted humans along the road to civilization. One view was the Agricultural or Neolithic Revolution proposed by Gordon Childe, who suggested that the various innovations that led to domestication occurred in a burst of creativity at oases dotted around the desiccated landscape of the Near East, and especially Egypt, immediately after the Pleistocene.2 Childe argued cogently that the intense interaction between, and eventual manipulation of, plants and animals by humans, in the close confines of these well-watered spots, led to the genetic changes that made various species
dependent on people, and thus increased their importance in our diet. Once in place, the Neolithic complex spread rapidly throughout southwest Asia and into Europe. Agriculture kicked off an unprecedented increase in human population and laid the foundation for civilization because it made possible specialization, surplus, division of labor, and other features of urban society.3 The Marxist neo-evolutionist Leslie White also described the development of agriculture as a pivotal episode in human history because of the enhanced capacity to capture energy that it brought about.4
