The Neolithic Revolution: Food and Water

Let’s start with a pretty straightforward definition of the Neolithic Revolution:

When humans began to shift from hunter-gatherer nomads to agricultural and pastoral settlers.
But what does that definition above mean? It means that humans stopped finding food and started making food.
It’s pretty simple, but let’s look at how this happened.

Millions of years ago, humans were more like animals. We were hairy, sweaty, smelly beasts that basically just
ate, pooped, burped, farted, and had sex. But evolution changed us. Evolution means when organisms adapt to
changes in the environment over thousands of years, like when animals go extinct or how plants and animals
get bigger or smaller over time (did you know that dragonflies used to be as big as birds when dinosaurs lived?).
The changes in the environment that caused this were called ice ages1, which means that, very slowly, over
hundreds of years, the earth gets colder. And as it gets colder, animals have to move around and search for
food. Humans would also move around because they followed the animals for food. We would sometimes
hunt these wild animals, but mostly we ate wild plants that we gathered. Why did we mostly eat plants? Because
plants don’t run away or fight back when you try to kill them (but if they did fight back, we’d probably have
some hero played by The Rock, Mark Whalberg, or Jason Statham to take those suckers down).

Some humans stayed in areas where there was enough food, but others left if there wasn’t enough food. Where
did they go? And how do we know?

Wherever humans went, they died. If we dig up those bones, we can figure out how old they are based on
radio-carbon dating. Carbon is an element that exists in all living things. Part of that carbon is a radioactive
element called Carbon 14, and half of all the Carbon 14 turns into Carbon 12 every 5,700 years. We can
measure the amount of Carbon 14 in a fossil to see how old it is. We have found human remains everywhere,
but some are older than others. The oldest ones are in Africa. I know what you’re thinking - “Wait, so we’re all
technically black? Then why can’t white people dance?” And to that I say “Justin Timberlake”.
Anyway, here is a map showing where humans traveled from 7 million years ago until about 10,000 years ago.

So by 10,000 B.C.E., humans were everywhere. How did they get there? During the ice age, the earth was
colder and the water at the top of the earth was frozen. Frozen water takes up more volume than liquid water,
so there was more water at the top and bottom of the earth (North and South Poles) and less in the middle
areas (the oceans). Since the oceans were lower, many of the islands we see today were not separated from the
mainland by water. The last Ice Age began around 10,500 BCE, and when it ended, it caused a revolution.

1 Like the movie Ice Age, except in real life, animals don’t speak English…but wouldn’t it be cool if they did?
Humans traveled and lived in the areas with the tastiest food that gave us the most energy. In flat, low areas
near rivers, the earth produced the best grains to eat (like wheat, rice, barley) and had fruits and vegetables
growing, so there were also good animals to hunt. However, in one area called the Fertile Crescent, which is
in Mesopotamia (in the Middle East by the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers) and the Nile River Valley (North
Africa), there were lots of different varieties of the same plants. Humans could choose the best kinds of wheat,
barley, fruits and vegetables to eat.

But around 9,000 BCE, suddenly the earth’s temperature rose and ended the last Ice Age, and many of these
areas were flooded. The plants were slowly being destroyed.

What could we do? We had to save the plants! But how? The people in the Fertile Crescent started saving their
seeds from the wild plants, and bringing them to higher ground where the water didn’t flood. They cleared all
the wild plants out of the high ground and planted the seeds from their favorite wild plants. And they grew!

They also saw the animals leaving, but since they had already built homes and decided to stay, they had to keep
the animals. Again, nobody knows where they got the idea from, but they captured wild animals that were easy
to catch (horses, cattle, boars, sheep) and, well, if you keep boy and girl animals in the same area for long
enough, they start lookin at each other. And the boys think “Damn, those ladies look cute to-DAY!” and the
girls think “Ooooh, those boys are so fine, I want me some of that!” and before you know it, they’re getting it
on. Then, a few months later – bam! Baby animals! And if these animals are raised around humans, they don’t
need to find food or learn survival skills, so they don’t know how to live in the wild anymore2. They are
domesticated (when something exists where you live).

And now, humans could make as many plants and animals as they wanted: 1) clear the land, 2) plant the seeds,
3) let the animals eat all the weeds you pull up (pastoralism), 4) let the animals poop in the fields (it’s
fertilizer…it helps the plants grow bigger…trust me), 5) when the plants are big enough, cut the good parts off,
6) let the animals eat the stumps, 7) animals poop in the field (seriously, it’s ok, we aren’t actually eating poop),
and then you have tons of food to store in case there’s not enough later on. This is agriculture (farming).

2 Like in the movie Madagascar…kind of. Again, real animals don’t talk.
The humans in the Fertile Crescent had more than enough food (this is called surplus agriculture). And some
of them started leaving again. And they brought their seeds, animals, and knowledge of farming with them.
Wherever these humans went, they told others about agriculture, so more and more humans, started to know
how to farm successfully.

And that, my friends, is the Neolithic Revolution. Most humans did not rely on hunting or gathering anymore
(although a lot still hunted because some animals are hard to domesticate, especially fish) and settled down in
villages that grew food. The better they got at farming, the more people they could support, so humans had
more babies, and bigger villages became the first cities. But that’s another story.

Created by Adam Feinberg