Class: SYJC Arts C

Roll no.: 515

Name: Medhavi Sukant Wadkar
EVS PROJECT

TITLE:

AIM:

INTRODUCTION:
Humans have been farming for only a brief part of their history. For 2.5 million
years humans fed themselves by gathering plants and hunting animals that lived
and bred without their intervention. Homo erectus, Homo ergaster and the
Neanderthals plucked wild figs and hunted wild sheep without deciding where
fig trees would take root or in which meadow a herd of sheep should graze.
Homo sapiens spread from East Africa to the Middle East, to Europe and Asia,
and finally to Australia and America – but everywhere they went, Sapiens too
continued to live by hunting and gathering.
All this changed about 10,000 years ago, when humans began to devote almost
all their time and effort to manipulating the lives of a few plant and animal
species. Humans began to sow seeds, water plants, plucked weeds and led sheep
and cattle to prime pastures. This work, they thought, would provide them with
more fruit, grain and meat. This was a revolution in the way humans lived – the
First Agricultural Revolution, also known as, the Neolithic Revolution. It was
the wide-scale transition of many human cultures during the Neolithic period
from a lifestyle of hunting and gathering to one of agriculture and settlement,
making an increasingly large population possible.
The shift to cultivating crops and domesticating wild animals marked a
profound transition in human culture – one that led to rise of cities, writing,
hierarchical societies, plagues and technology.
However, the Agricultural Revolution left farmers with lives generally more
difficult and less satisfying than those of foragers, and the number of species on
the planet steadily depleting.
RELEVANCE:
Food is a physical necessity.
Between 10,000 B.C. and 3,000 B.C., peoples in the Middle East, Southeast
Asia, and other regions of Asia, Africa and Europe underwent the first great
revolution in human culture: the development of agriculture. They learned to
domesticate sheep, pigs and cattle; to grow crops such as wheat, rice, barley,
oats, millet and flax. Farmers produced surpluses. People began to gather in
villages, towns and city-states, dividing into specialised occupations and
forming social hierarchies based on wealth. Organised agriculture everywhere
encouraged larger settlements and growing populations. When 1 family could
feed 20 others, people were free to specialise in other occupations leading to
trade, the concept of money, and overall organised societies.
From around 8,000 B.C. to the mid-17th century, the world’s population grew
slowly from 10 million to 500 million. The total number of humans born since
50,000 B.C. is estimated at about 106 billion.
It is clear that there is a direct relationship between agriculture and increase of
human population.
But humans are not the only living creatures on Earth.
Since the Agricultural Revolution, the diet available to humans became much
narrower as compared to those of earlier hunter-gatherers. The domestication of
plants meant that only those plants that were deemed useful for humans were
cultivated and other plants were destroyed to clear land for agricultural crops to
grow on.
Thus, the variety in plant species began declining slowly but steadily throughout
the ages. This phenomenon was even more noticeable during the ‘Green
revolution’ when certain high-yielding species were given preference over a
wider range of native species of a particular crop.
The same goes for animal species. Many animal species have died out simply
because they were of no use to humans and thus were not bred with care. Even
to this day various species are in danger of going extinct due to habitat loss and
associated reasons.
Thus, it is clear that the First Agricultural Revolution set the base to inextricably
linking human subsistence and the populations of almost every species on earth
in an inescapable trap.
OBJECTIVES:
METHODOLOGY:

DATA ANALYSIS
Data obtained from:

Books:
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2015 Vintage edition)
National Geographic Answer Book: 10,001 Fast Facts About Our World (2016
Impulse Marketing edition)

Websites:

www.google.com

www.wikipedia.org

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neolithic_Revolution
OBSERVATION:

1.
History of Agriculture

A.
Beginning of Agriculture:

Agriculture arose independently in at least five areas of the world: the Fertile
Crescent, China, Mesoamerica, the Andes, and eastern North America.
In the Fertile Crescent, hunters harvested grain with flint knives and began to
herd sheep and goats for food and clothing. Attempts such as scattering seeds to
enlarge production or controlling the feeding and breeding of herd animals laid
the foundations of an agricultural society.
Einkorn, an ancient wheat, was gathered by humans in the Stone Age, 10,000
B.C., and possibly earlier.
In Northern China, millet cultivation, silkworm farming, and the domestication
of both pigs and dogs characterised village life from about the seventh
millennium B.C.
Mesoamerican farmers developed seed crops such as maize, beans, and squash
during the sixth millennium B.C.
Rice cultivation dates back to well before 5,000 B.C. in East Asia, where
Chinese farmers living in the delta of the Yangtze River cultivated rice in
irrigated fields.
Crops and farming techniques spread especially rapidly from the Middle East to
Europe and Asia, given similar growing conditions and a relative lack of
geographical barriers. In fact, earlier scientists used to believe that agriculture
spread from a single Middle Eastern point of origin to the rest of the world.
Whereas in South America and Africa diffusion may have been hampered by
differing climates and obstacles such as deserts and jungles.
In Asia and Europe, the invention of the plow made possible the use of draft
animals, the development of larger fields, and the cultivation of heavier soils.

B.
Domestication of Animals:

In the history of agriculture, the domestication of animals is as important as the

domestication of plants. When hunter-gathering began to be replaced by
sedentary food production it became more efficient to keep animals close at
hand. Therefore, it became necessary to bring animals permanently to their
settlements. Apart from supplementary food supplies they provide
transportation, military might, and companionship.
Dogs were probably the first animals domesticated, bred from wolves as long as
12,000 years ago to accompany early hunters.
By 9,000 B.C. or so, Middle Eastern nomads began to breed sheep and goats for
meat.
Not long afterward, perhaps by 7,000 B.C., Asian farmers domesticated cattle
and pigs.
Early civilizations soon bred cats as mousers; in Egypt they gained sacred status
leading to lasting monuments such as the Great Sphinx at Giza.
Chickens, a double-use food source, may have evolved from Asian jungle fowl
domesticated as early as 3,000 B.C. Eggs have been gathered and eaten by
humans for tens of thousands of years.
From 3,000 B.C. to 1,500 B.C., transport animals begin to appear: horses in
Asia, asses in Egypt, camels in North Africa and Asia, and llamas and alpacas
in South America.
In the next centuries, poultry, bees, and rabbits began to be domesticated too.
C.
Cuisine of Ancient Farmers:

Some animals and plants such as camels and cashew nuts were domesticated
later but it can safely be said that by 3,500 B.C. the main wave of domestication
was over. No noteworthy plant or animal has been domesticated in the last
2,000 years.
Even today, with all the latest technologies, more than 90 percent of the calories
that feed humanity come from the handful of plants that our ancestors
domesticated between 9,500 and 3,500 B.C. – wheat, rice, maize, potatoes,
millet and barley.
Rice, a labour-intensive plant, represents a staple food for more than half the
world’s people. Wheat, best in temperate climates, is Earth’s most widely
cultivated grain. Maize, a staple in prehistoric Mexico and Peru, has spread
around the world. Meat and milk from early-domesticated animals make up
about a fifth of the daily menu in developed countries.

2.
EFFECTS ON HUMANS:

A.
Formation of Communities and Negative Effects:

The introduction of agriculture did not necessarily led to unequivocal progress.

The traditional view is that agricultural food production supported a denser
population, which in turn supported larger sedentary communities, the
accumulation of goods and tools, and specialization in diverse forms of new
labour. The development of larger societies led to the development of different
means of decision making and to governmental organization.
Food surpluses made possible the development of a social elite who were not
otherwise engaged in agriculture, but dominated their communities by other
means and monopolized decision-making.
This can be seen clearly if we study the timeline of history.
12,000 years ago, the First Agriculture Revolution began. 5,000 years ago, the
first kingdoms, scripts, money and polytheistic religions began to appear. Just
4,250 years ago, the first empire appeared. 2,500 years ago, the Persian Empire,
Buddhism, and coinage appeared and so on.
Despite the significant technological advance, the First Agricultural Revolution
did not lead immediately to a rapid growth of population.
The nutritional standards of the growing Neolithic populations were inferior to
that of hunter-gatherers. Several ethnological and archaeological studies
conclude that the transition to cereal-based diets caused a reduction in life
expectancy and stature, an increase in infant mortality and infectious diseases,
the development of chronic, inflammatory or degenerative diseases (such as
obesity, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases) and multiple nutritional
deficiencies, including vitamin deficiencies, iron deficiency anaemia and
mineral disorders affecting bones (such as osteoporosis and rickets) and teeth.
Average height went down from 178 cm for men and 168 cm for women to
165 cm and 155 cm, respectively, and it took until the twentieth century for
average human height to come back to the pre-Neolithic Revolution levels.

Thus, it can safely be stated that the First Agricultural Revolution set the basis
for organised society as we see today, though not without consequences.

B.
Time and Money: