ABSTRACT
Whatever the complex factors that led to agriculture and animal domestication, the new food-producing economies proved dramatically successful. In 10,000 BC , virtually everybody in the world lived by hunting and gathering. By AD 1, the time of Christ, most people were farmers or herders, and only a minority were still hunter-gatherers, most of them living in environments where extreme cold or aridity prevented the growth of domesticated crops. The spread of food production throughout the world took only about 8,000 years.
