Inside the Neolithic Revolution

Spread of humans

1. Climate and Terrain: Conditions for Agriculture

• Good weather and change of seasons.• Plenty of rainfall• Different elevations for different crops• Access to rivers and fresh water• Good soil

Agriculture: Causes

• What made it necessary in some places and unnecessary in others?

– Adequate domesticable plants and animals made it possible = Agriculture

– Shortage of animals and domesticable plants = No agriculture

Areas of agriculture

• China: Millet, wheat and rice

• Mesopotamia (Iraq): wheat and barley

• South and Central America: corn, squash, and beans

• Africa: sorghum, millet, and yams

Early agricultural breadbaskets

Criteria for domestication of animals

• Herbivores (plant eaters)• Adequate size (over 100 pounds)• Friendly and not competitive• Fast growth rate and birth spacing• Will breed in captivity• Predictable and won’t panic

143 possibilities--only 14 fit all criteria. All domesticated animals today domesticated by 2500 BCE

Animal domestication

Eurasia Sub-Saharan Africa

Americas Australia

Species that met some criteria for domestication

72

51

24

1

Species that met ALL criteria for domestication

13

0

1

0

Domesticable Plants and Animals and their undomesticable close

relatives

Only 14 animals were domesticatedThe major 5:

»Sheep »Goat»Cow »Pig »Horse

Benefits of Domesticated Animals

• Domesticated animals provide a food source• Domesticated animals provide labor• Domesticated animals provide fertilizer (but

don’t step in it!)• Exposure to domesticated animals leads to

disease– Cows: small pox, measles, tuberculosis– Pigs: influenza (flu)

• Societies eventually developed immunities to these diseases

The spread of agriculture

• Farming spread slowly in the Americas and Africa

• Farming spread quickly in Eurasia