Food producers became village dwellers, other groups used Neolithic tools and settled in villages while still maintaining a foraging lifestyle as some groups do into the present. The Neolithic revolution was by no means smooth or instantaneous; in fact, the switch to food production spread over many centuries—even millennia—and was a direct outgrowth of the preceding Mesolithic. Where to draw the line between the two periods is not always clear.
The ultimate source of all cultural change is innovation: any new idea, method, or device that gains widespread acceptance in society. Primary innovation is the creation, invention, or discovery by chance of a completely new idea, method, or device. A chance discovery, such as the observation that clay permanently hardens when exposed to high temperatures, is the kind of primary innovation that likely took place around numerous ancient campfires. This perception allowed our ancestors to begin to make figurines of fired clay some
35,000 years ago.
A secondary innovation is a deliberate application or modification of an existing idea, method, or device. For example, ancient people applied the knowledge about fired clay to make pottery containers and cooking vessels. Recent evidence from Yuchanyan Cave, located in the southwest of China’s Hunan Province, indicates the presence of the earliest pottery vessels; these are radio-carbon dated to between 15,430 and 18,300 years ago.
The transition to relatively complete reliance on domesticated plants and animals took several thousand years. While this transition has been particularly well studied in Southwest Asia, archaeological evidence for food production also
Natufian culture A Mesolithic culture living in the lands that are now Israel, Lebanon, and western Syria, between about 10,200 and 12,500 years ago.
Neolithic revolution The profound cultural change beginning about 10,000 years ago and associated with the early domestication of plants and animals and settlement in permanent villages. Sometimes referred to as the Neolithic transition. innovation Any new idea, method, or device that gains widespread acceptance in society.
Primary innovation The creation, invention, or discovery by chance of a completely new idea, method, or device. secondary innovation The deliberate application or modification of an existing idea, method, or device.
Pottery shards were recently discovered along with rice grains and stone tools at Yuchanyan Cave, located in China's Hunan Province, by a team of American, Israeli, and Chinese archaeologists. Bone fragments and charcoal found in association with the pottery allowed scientists to accurately date the pottery to between 17,500 and 18,300 years ago by measuring the fraction of carbon isotopes in these organic materials. The careful excavation at this site has provided important evidence that connects pottery making hunter-gatherers, who inhabited this cave, to the rice farmers that came to inhabit the nearby Yangzte River basin several thousand years later.
Exists from other parts of the world such as China and Central America and the Andes at similar or somewhat younger dates. The critical point is not which region invented farming first, but rather the independent but more or less simultaneous invention of food production throughout the globe.
World History
