Neolithic Revolution: Agriculture's Transformative Impact

The Neolithic Revolution was the wide-scale transition of many human cultures from a lifestyle of hunting to one of agriculture, allowing the ability to support an increasingly large population. Archaeological data indicates that the training of various types of plants and animals evolved in separate locations worldwide. It was the world's first historically verifiable revolution in agriculture.

The Neolithic Revolution involved far more than the adoption of a limited set of food-producing techniques. During the next eras it would transform the small and mobile groups of hunter-gatherers that had hitherto dominated human pre-history into sedentary societies based in built-up villages and towns. These societies radically modified their natural

The term Neolithic Revolution was coined in 1923 by V. Gordon Childe to describe the first in a series of agricultural revolutions in Middle Eastern history. The period is described as a "revolution" to denote its importance, and the great significance and degree of change affecting the communities in which new agricultural practices were gradually adopted and refined.

The beginning of this process in different regions has been dated from 10,000 to 8,000 BC in theFertile Crescent and perhaps 8000 BC in the Kuk Early Agricultural Site of Melanesia to 2500 BC in Subsaharan Africa, with some considering the developments of 9000–7000 BC in the Fertile Crescent to be the most important. This transition everywhere seems associated with a change from a largely nomadic hunter-gatherer way of life to a more settled, agrarian-based one, with the inception of the domestication of various plant and animal species, depending on the species locally available, and probably also influenced by local culture. Recent archaeological research suggests that in some regions such as the Southeast Asian peninsula, the transition from hunter-gatherer to agriculturalist was not

Therefore, it became necessary to bring animals permanently to their settlements, although in many cases there was a distinction between relatively sedentary farmers and nomadic herders. The animals' size, temperament, diet, mating patterns, and life span were factors in the desire and success in domesticating animals. Animals that provided milk, such as cows and goats, offered a source of protein that was renewable and therefore quite valuable. The animal’s ability as a worker, as well as a food source, also had to be taken into account. Besides being a direct source of food, certain animals could provide leather, wool, hides, and fertilizer. Some of the earliest domesticated animals included dogs sheep, goats, cows, and