ABSTRACT
The changeover to food production—agriculture and animal husbandry—was arguably the most important development in human history. This chapter describes the world after the Ice Age and the changes in hunter-gatherer societies that responded to climate change, often with great social complexity. Generations of theories attempt to explain the origins of food production, many of them focused on a combination of factors, among them drought and growing populations, changing environments, and increased competition for food resources. Food production brought major changes in human lifeways, among them more permanent settlement, new social mechanisms to govern the inheritance of land and for resolving disputes. The changeover took place in the Middle East around 11000 BC, and somewhat later in other locations, among them South Asia, northern and southern China, and the Americas.
