ABSTRACT
The domestication of plants and animals – the development of agriculture – has fascinated analysts for centuries. The best-documented case of the breakthrough from initial experimentation to full-scale agriculture and food production is that of wheat, developed on the highlands of the Anatolian Peninsula and the adjoining lowlands of the Fertile Crescent. The Chinese and Austronesians were improvers rather than inventors of agriculture, but they spread rice cultivation and themselves far and wide. The spread of agriculture to every area of the world was partly through colonization by the original developers of agriculture, but it was equally the result of crop migration. The result came to be a substantial increase in productivity, so that the populations living from agriculture, herding, and fishing grew in comparison to other populations, and a whole new set of social dynamics came into being.
