When and Where Did the Change from Food Foraging to Food Production Begin?
Independent centers of early plant and animal domestication exist in Africa, China, Mesoamerica, North and South America, as well as Southwest and Southeast Asia. From these places, food production spread to most other parts of the world. Food production began independently at more or less the same time around 10,000 years ago in these different places—perhaps a bit earlier in Southwest Asia than elsewhere. Due to the breadth of changes induced by this transition, it is commonly referred to as the Neolithic revolution. Though farming has changed dramatically over the millennia, crops people rely on today, such as rice, wheat, and maize, originated with those earliest farmers.
What Were the Consequences of the Neolithic Revolution?
Although food production generally leaves less leisure time than food foraging, it does permit reallocation of the workload. Some people can produce enough food to support those who undertake other tasks, and so a number of technological developments, such as weaving and pottery making, generally accompany food production. In addition, a sedentary lifestyle in villages allows for the construction of more substantial housing. Finally, the new modes of work and resource allocation require new ways of organizing people, generally into lineages, clans, and common-interest associations.
Throughout the Paleolithic, people depended exclusively on wild sources of food for their survival. They hunted and trapped wild animals, fished, and gathered shellfish, eggs, berries, nuts, roots, and other plant foods, relying on their wits and muscles to acquire what nature provided. Whenever favored sources of food became scarce, people adjusted by increasing the variety of foods eaten and incorporating less desirable foods into their diets.
Over time, the subsistence practices of some people began to change in ways that radically transformed their way of life as they became food producers rather than food foragers.177 For some human groups, food production was accompanied by a more sedentary existence, which in turn permitted a reorganization of the workload in society: Some individuals could be freed from the food quest to devote their energies to other tasks. Over the course of thousands of years, these changes brought about an unforeseen way of life. With good reason, the Neolithic (literally, the “New Stone” Age), when this change took place, has been characterized as revolutionary.
World History
