Neolithic Revolution Show Description
Click image The Neolithic Revolution was the critical transition that resulted in the birth of agriculture, taking Homo sapiens from scattered groups of hunter-gatherers to farming villages and from there to technologically sophisticated societies with great temples and towers and kings and priests who directed the labor of their subjects and recorded their feats in written form. The Neolithic Revolution was viewed as a single event—a sudden flash of genius—that occurred in a single location, Mesopotamia, between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in what is now southern Iraq, specifically the site of a realm known as Sumer, which dates back to about 4000 B.C.E. It then spread to India, Europe, and beyond. Most archaeologists believed this sudden blossoming of civilization was driven largely by environmental changes: a gradual warming as the Ice Age ended that allowed some people to begin cultivating plants and herding animals in abundance. Agriculture For thousands of years men and women with stone implements had wandered the landscape, cutting off heads of wild grain and taking them home. Even though these people may have tended and protected their grain patches, the plants they watched over were still wild. Wild wheat and barley, unlike their domesticated versions, shatter when they are ripe—the kernels easily break off the plant and fall to the ground, making them next to impossible to harvest when fully ripe. Genetically speaking, true grain agriculture began only when people planted large new areas with mutated plants that did not shatter at maturity, creating fields of domesticated wheat and barley that, so to speak, waited for farmers to harvest them. Rather than having to comb through the landscape for food, people could now grow as much as they needed and where they needed it, so they could live together in larger groups. As the population quickly increased, ideas could be more readily exchanged, and rates of technological and social innovation soared. Religion and art—the hallmarks of civilization�flourished. Natufians Although the Natufians lived in permanent settlements of up to several hundred people, they were foragers, not farmers, hunting gazelles and gathering wild rye, barley, and wheat. Natufian villages ran into hard times around 10,800 B.C.E., when regional temperatures abruptly fell some 12�F, part of a mini ice age that lasted 1,200 years and created much drier conditions across the Fertile Crescent. With animal habitat and grain patches shrinking, a number of villages suddenly became too populous for the local food supply. Many people once again became wandering foragers, searching the landscape for remaining food sources. Some settlements tried to adjust to the more arid conditions by cultivating local stands of rye, perhaps replanting them. Rye grains were bigger than their wild equivalents—a possible sign of domestication, because cultivation inevitably increases qualities, such as fruit and seed size, that people find valuable. The Natufian protovillages in the Levant suggested that settlement came first and that farming arose later, as a result of crisis. Confronted with a drying, cooling environment and growing populations, humans in the remaining relatively fertile areas stayed where they were and subsisted, developing agriculture in the process. New Evidence
Click image The construction of massive temples by a groups of foragers is evidence that organized religion could have come before the rise of agriculture and other aspects of civilization. It suggests that the human impulse to gather for sacred rituals arose as humans shifted from seeing themselves as part of the natural world to seeking mastery over it. When foragers began settling down in villages, they unavoidably created a divide between the human realm—a fixed huddle of homes with hundreds of inhabitants—and the dangerous land beyond the campfire, populated by lethal beasts. This change in consciousness was a "revolution of symbols," a conceptual shift that allowed humans to imagine gods—supernatural beings resembling humans—that existed in a universe beyond the physical world. The animal figures at G�bekli Tepe could have been guardians to the spirit world. It is possible that foragers living within a hundred-mile radius of G�bekli Tepe created the temple as a holy place to gather and meet, perhaps bringing gifts and tributes to its priests and crafts�people. Some kind of social organization would have been necessary not only to build it but also to deal with the crowds it attracted. One imagines chanting and drumming, the animals on the great pillars seeming to move in flickering torchlight. Surely there were feasts, and stone basins have been uncovered that could have been used for beer. Crisis-Driven Change Some of the first evidence for plant domestication comes from Nevali �ori (pronounced nuh-vah-LUH CHO-ree), a settlement in the mountains scarcely 20 miles away. Like G�bekli Tepe, Nevali �ori came into existence right after the mini ice age, a time archaeologists describe with the unlovely term Pre-pottery Neolithic (PPN). Nevali �ori is now inundated by a recently created lake that provides electricity and irrigation water for the region. But before the waters shut down research, archaeologists found T-shaped pillars and animal images much like those uncovered at G�bekli Tepe. Similar pillars and images occurred in PPN settlements up to a hundred miles from G�bekli Tepe. Much as one can surmise today that homes with images of the Virgin Mary belong to Christians, the imagery in these PPN sites indicates a shared religion�a community of faith that surrounded G�bekli Tepe and may have been the world's first truly large religious grouping. Multiple Hypotheses Excerpted and adapted from: Mann, Charles C. 2011. The Birth of Religion. National Geographic Magazine 219(6):34-59. Which of the following was a consequence of the agricultural revolution?The agricultural revolution had a variety of consequences for humans. It has been linked to everything from societal inequality—a result of humans' increased dependence on the land and fears of scarcity—to a decline in nutrition and a rise in infectious diseases contracted from domesticated animals.
What was a major consequence of the agricultural revolution quizlet?In what way did the Agricultural Revolution pave the way for the Industrial Revolution? it led to population growth. it increased food supplies. it caused farmers to lose and seek other work.
What happened in the first agricultural revolution?The Neolithic Revolution, or the (First) Agricultural Revolution, was the wide-scale transition of many human cultures during the Neolithic period from a lifestyle of hunting and gathering to one of agriculture and settlement, making an increasingly large population possible.
Which of the following was the most important consequence of the agricultural revolution?Crop Rotation. One of the most important innovations of the Agricultural Revolution was the development of the Norfolk four-course rotation, which greatly increased crop and livestock yields by improving soil fertility and reducing fallow.
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