NEOLITHIC REVOLUTION
By Jordan Larson
12/04/09
Vere Gordon Childe (1892-1957) coined the term “Neolithic Revolution” in the
1920s. The term refers to an agriculture revolution that began in c.10,000 B.C.E and
ended in c. 4000 B.C.E. The word "revolution" denotes its importance and that it was a
turning point in human history, which made it possible for people to create civilizations.
The Neolithic revolution was also a large step in human development for reasons other
than agriculture. It was a transition from nomadic wandering to permanent civilization,
and it gave birth to the domestication of plants and animals on a large scale. The
revolution brought about ways of living that are still largely followed today.
The Neolithic revolution began independently in many regions over a rather
lengthy amount of time. Around 10,000 B.C.E the process began in the region of
Melanesia. The Fertile Crescent, which some people consider to be the most important
region of Neolithic influence, began making advances characterized by the Neolithic
Revolution around C. 9000-7000 B.C.E. The sub-Sahara of Africa was one of the last
areas to be effected, around 4000B.C.E or later. Even though a few thousand years
seems like a very large amount of time, in the timeline of human history, it is incredible
that these advances took place independently within only a few thousand years and
over such a large area.
The Neolithic Revolution began when humans learned the concepts of
agriculture. The first thing humans learned about agriculture was that a plant could be
harvested, and then its seeds could be placed back into the ground to grow another of
the same plant. That simple concept lead to the domestication of crops. The process of
domestication allowed the crops to adapt and eventually become larger, more easily
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harvested, more dependable in storage and more useful to the human population. In
the Fertile Crescent several plant species, the "pioneer crops" or Neolithic founder
crops, were the earliest plants successfully domesticated by humans. These founder
crops included: Emmer, Einkorn, Barley, Lentil, Pea, Chickpea, Bitter Vetch, and Flax.
The domestication of these plants formed the basis of systematic agriculture in the
Middle East, North Africa, India, Persia and, years later, Europe. Some of the
pioneering attempts failed at first and crops were abandoned, sometimes to be taken up
again and successfully domesticated thousands of years later; rye, tried and abandoned
in Neolithic Anatolia, made its way to Europe as weed seeds and was successfully
domesticated in Europe thousands of years after the earliest agriculture. These
advances in agriculture made it possible for humans to farm on such a colossal level to
support population numbers in the millions.
Along with the domestication of plants, the first domestication of animals as a
food source was attempted during the Neolithic Revolution. The animals' size,
temperament, diet, mating patterns, and life span were factors in the success of the
domestication of animals. Animals that provided milk, such as cows and goats, offered a
source of protein that was renewable and therefore quite valuable. An animal’s ability as
a worker, for example plowing or towing, as well as a food source, also had to be taken
into account. Some of the earliest domesticated animals included dogs (around 15,000
years ago), sheep, goats, cows, and pigs. These advances in animal farming, like
agriculture, make it possible to provide meat as a stable food source for millions of
people.
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Several competing, but not mutually exclusive, theories have been proposed as
to the factors that drove populations to take up agriculture. The Oasis Theory, originally
proposed by Raphael Pumpelly in 1908, popularized by Vere Gordon Childe in 1928
and summarized in Childe's book Man Makes Himself, maintains that as the climate got
drier, communities contracted to oases where they were forced into close association
with animals, which were then domesticated together with planting of seeds. It has little
support now because climate data for the time does not support the theory. Robert
John Braidwood (1907-2003) proposed The Hilly Flanks hypothesis in 1948. It suggests
that agriculture began in the hilly flanks of the Taurus and Zagros mountains, where the
climate was not drier as Childe had believed, and fertile land supported a variety of
plants and animals amenable to domestication. Ronald Wright (born 1948) wrote a
book in 2004, A Short History of Progress, which makes a case for the development of
agriculture coinciding with an increasingly stable climate. This idea was extended to
current issues of global warming/climate change. It presented the thought that perhaps
a major effect of increased CO2 levels in the atmosphere could very well be a shift to a
less stable and more unpredictable climate. Such a shift could impact agriculture in
profound ways. Even though we can learn a lot from ancient history, there will always
be some things we will never know.
The Neolithic Revolution changed the world forever, and the consequences of it
can still be seen in ordinary life today. The advances in agriculture caused advances in
tool making and irrigation. Men worked in the fields while women stayed home caring
for the children, and making clothes and food. This is basically still the way traditional
households are run.
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This time period gave birth to the first permanent settlements. Jericho, in
Palestine near the Dead Sea, was in existence by 8000 B.C.E. and by 7000 B.C.E it
was a small city covering several acres with a protective wall around it. Çatal Hüyük,
located in modern Turkey, was an even larger settlement. Its walls enclosed 32 acres,
and its population reached around six thousand inhabitants during its high point from
6700-5700 B.C.E. The new life style in these types of permanent settlements allowed
people to spend more time on inventing new tools, and more time to just create using
their hands. This lead to an increase in the number of artisans specialized in different
crafts. Trade began to appear in Neolithic Communities with the rise of tool making and
craft making, such as the creation of clay pots, woven baskets, and small clay statues
and statuettes. In cities such as Çatal Hüyük citizens could become quite wealthy
through a good harvest, or several harvests, and trade. Once the towns and cities
acquired this “stored wealth”, they needed to protect it from outsiders somehow, and
this brought about the first armies the world had ever seen. Religion gained
importance during the Neolithic Revolution due to the fact that shrines and temples
could be built to worship the gods, and statues and statuettes could be constructed in
the gods honor and placed in the shrines. Such shrines and statuettes have been found
in Çatal Hüyük.
At first, compared to modern cities, Neolithic settlements were hardly more than
villages. But as their inhabitants mastered the art of farming, more complex human
societies gradually emerged. As wealth increased, these societies sought to protect it
from plunder by outsiders and so began to develop armies and to build walled cities. By
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the beginning of the Bronze Age, the concentration of large numbers of people in river
valleys was leading to a whole new pattern for human life.
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