Name_________________________________________________________
Learning Guide Ch 2, First Farmers: The Revolutions of Agriculture, 10,000 B.C.E -3,000 B.C.E.
The Agricultural Revolution in World History
1. What were the revolutionary transformations brought about by the Neolithic or Agricultural
Revolution?
The most revolutionary aspect of the age of agriculture is the new relationship between humans and
other living things as human now began to actively change nature and direct evolution. This
domestication or taming of both plants and animals created a mutual dependence as domesticated
animals could no longer survive in the wild and humans lost the skills of hunter/gatherers. Humans
became dependent on their dependent plants and animals.
2. What was the importance of “intensification” in the Neolithic Age?
Intensification refers to getting more for less meaning getting more food and resources from a much
smaller area of land than had been possible with hunting and gathering technology. More food led to
growing population than then required even greater need for exploitation of the environment.
Comparing Agricultural Beginnings
3. What accounts for the emergence of agriculture after countless millennia of human life without it?
After the Ice Age ended around 16,000 years ago a process of global warming began and by 11,000
years ago it was fully over and this was around the same time humans migrated across the earth and
created new conditions that made agriculture possible. When combined active hunting with climate
change, some species were pushed into extinction.
The warmer, wetter and more stable conditions per kitted more wild pants to grow, particularly cereal
grasses, ancestors of many domesticated crops.
4. What tools and technologies did humans develop and how and why did they vary?
Sickles were used in the Middle East, woven baskets, mortars and pestles to remove the husk, and
storage pits. The digging stick or hoe was developed but horticulture depended on what plants and
animals were available in each area.
5. What were the indications that the transition to a fully agricultural and domesticated new way of
life took place quickly in the Fertile Crescent region?
Signs of the transformation to agriculture includes large increases in the size of settlements, where
archeologists have found major innovations like sun-dried bricks, monuments or shrines, displays of
cattle skulls, more elaborate human burials, and more sophisticated tools such as sickles, axes, and
awls.
6. Why did animal domestication precede the domestication of plants in Africa? (present day Sudan)
Cattle were brought into this region 1,000 years before they were brought under human control in the
Middle East and India. The donkey was also domesticated in northeastern Africa and spread, as did
domestication of sheep and goats.
7. While sorghum was the first grain to be tamed in Eastern Africa, what plants were important crops
in West Africa?
In Ethiopia, teff, a highly nutritious grain and enset (related to the banana) both came into cultivation,
along with yams, palm tress, okra, and the kola nut all emerged as important crops. This was less
productive than the Fertile Crescent as it was less compact. But African domesticated contributions
such as sorghum, castor beans, gourds, millet and the donkey all spread and enrighed the practices of
the people in Eurasia.
8. Why did the peoples of America lack sources of protein, manure, and power to pull carts?
It did not have animals that could be domesticated. Llamas are the only large domesticated animals
found in the Americans. They then had to rely more on hunting and fishing than did peoples in the
Eastern Hemisphere.
The Globalization of Agriculture
9. In what ways did agriculture spread?
The spread of agriculture occurred by diffusion and migration. Diffusion was a gradual spread of
agricultural techniques which may be the animals and plants unaided, but without great movement of
agricultural people. Another process was through colonization or migration as populations grew and
pushed them outward. This meant conquest, absorption, or displacement of earlier hunter-gatherers,
along with spread if the cultures and languages of those migrations.
10. Describe the development of agricultural societies in the southern half of the African continent
beginning around 3,000 B.C.E.
In Africa the development of agricultural societies in the southern half of the continent is associated
with the migration of peoples speaking one or another form of some 400 Bantu languages. IT began in
Nigeria or Cameroon and they moved east and south over the next several thousand years, and with
them traveled their agricultural, cattle-raising, and later iron-working skills. They absorbed, killed or
drove away Paleolithic peoples and many were exposed to disease that were animal-borne and they
were not immune.
11. Where was agriculture sometimes resisted? Why?
In areas unsuitable to farming such as harsh desert or artic environments or in places that had natural
abundance, the people felt little need for agriculture.
12. What was the impact on the environment from farmers and herders?
Social Variations in the Age of Agriculture
13. Describe the 3 different kinds of societies that emerged out of the Agricultural Revolution. (Who
were they? How were they organized? pp. 48-52)
14. After reading about Catalhuyuk in Turkey, why do you think the people designed their city the
way they did?
Visit these websites for more background information:
http://www.focusmm.com/civcty/cathyk04.htm
http://www.smm.org/catal/introduction/ This website is interactive. 
Explain the significance of each of the following:
Domestication—
Animal husbandry—