Dark Green: By 8,000 years ago
Light Green: By 6,000 years ago
Red Dots: Early agricultural settlements
Orange lined area: Distribution of Wild cereals
White diagonal lines: Distribution of: Wild sheep
and goats
Early Migration
Impact of Agricultural Societies on

Irrigation Salinization of soil

Slash and burn  desertification

Population increase

Urbanization
Environment
Impact of Agricultural Society on Social
Interaction and Social Stratification
 Increased labor specialization
 Increased work-load!!! Especially for children!
 Increased conflict over resources, labor, and luxury items
with new technologies
 Social stratification (socio-economic classes develop)
 City-states with urban areas, specialized institutions,
military, religious, social and political hierarchies,
long distance trade, economic (as well as ideas,
inventions and germs) exchanges between local and
regional, as well as nomadic pastoralists and settled
peoples.
Impact of Agricultural Society
on Gender Roles
 How might gender roles change as people
stop their nomadic lifestyles and become
horticulturalists?
 Early Neolithic horticulturalists: shared
responsibility women farmed with the help of
her children, men hunted, then helped at home.
 With population growth and expansion, military
became more important and women
increasingly were viewed by society as inferior.
 goddesses lost out to gods
 Family line through the father (patrilineal) instead
of through the mother (matrilineal)
 Patriarchy in early societies(Code of Hammurabi)
Population
 Demography: The study of population size, growth and
age structure, and of the forces (fertility, mortality,
migration) that lead to population change.