ABSTRACT
The chapter will primarily focus on the process of beginning of food production and its dispersal besides analysing the development of animal husbandry, an essential outcome of the development of agriculture. Popularly known as ‘Neolithic’, this period in human history has been widely researched and hotly debated. The text will incorporate all major hypotheses related to the reasons behind shift in the human adaptability from hunting-gathering to food production. The discussion on the analysis of the reasons behind the beginning of the agriculture will include the traditional approaches highlighting climatic factors or desiccation of the post-Pleistocene environment and modern theories (post-1950) emphasising the development of agriculture as a process rather than a phenomenon. Modern historiography will be studied under ‘push’, ‘pull’, social, cultural, as well as ‘multi-variate’ factor models.
The chapter will then describe region-wise origin and dispersal of agricultural technology. This will include a discussion on the Neolithic cultures of Southwest Asia covering areas such as the Levant, Anatolia, and Mesopotamia. The analytical details of the Neolithic cultures will be entirely based on the modern definition of the term ‘Neolithic’. The discussion on the beginning of food production in Europe will also consider the present debate on the ‘diffusion’ versus ‘indigenous’ development of agriculture in this region. The area of focus in Europe will be South and Southeast Europe, Central Europe, and Northern Europe in a chronological sequence.
The concluding portion of the chapter will analyse the development of animal husbandry as an essential corollary of the development of food production in Southwest Asia and Europe. Beginning with the definitions of animal husbandry, the discussion will include the reasons (ideal environmental conditions and availability of wild species) for the domestication of animals such as sheep, goats, cattle, pigs, and dogs in particular regions. The process of animal domestication in Europe will take into account the present debate, emphasising the introduction of domesticable animals into Europe by the Near-Eastern herders on the one hand and the parallel development of animal husbandry in Europe on the other. The section will end with an evaluation of the impact of animal husbandry on both humans and the animal species themselves.
