Origins
For over 200,000 years, anatomically modern humans lived as hunter-gatherers, obtaining food through foraging, hunting, and fishing. Population densities remained low, groups were mobile, and material accumulation was limited. The transition to agriculture, beginning around 12,000 years ago, was among the most consequential changes in human history, eventually enabling dense settlements, social stratification, specialized labor, and the complex societies we recognize as civilizations.
Agriculture emerged independently in multiple regions. The Fertile Crescent, spanning modern-day Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran, saw early domestication of wheat, barley, lentils, sheep, goats, and cattle. Chinese agriculture developed around millet and rice in distinct northern and southern centers. Mesoamerican peoples domesticated maize, beans, and squash. The Andes saw potato and llama domestication. These independent origins, using different species in different environments, suggest that agriculture was not a single invention but a response to conditions that prevailed across multiple regions as the last ice age ended.
Why people adopted agriculture remains debated. Farming required more labor than foraging and initially produced less varied diets. Population pressure may have forced intensification of food production. Climate change at the end of the Pleistocene may have encouraged sedentism and experimentation with plants. Once adopted, agriculture created feedback loops: larger populations required more food production, which enabled still larger populations, making return to foraging impossible.
Structure & Function
Agriculture encompasses diverse practices adapted to local environments. Cultivation techniques range from shifting agriculture, clearing forest plots for temporary use, to intensive irrigation systems supporting permanent fields. Crops include cereals, legumes, root vegetables, fruits, and fibers. Animal husbandry provides meat, milk, hides, wool, and traction power. These elements combine differently across regions: Mediterranean polyculture of wheat, olives, and grapes differs from Southeast Asian wet rice farming or Andean altitude-stratified cultivation.
Agricultural systems require managing land, water, labor, and time. Field preparation, planting, weeding, irrigation, and harvest must align with seasonal cycles. Surplus storage protects against failed harvests but requires storage technology and protection from pests and thieves. Livestock need pasture, water, and shelter. These demands encouraged permanent settlement: investment in cleared fields, irrigation works, and storage facilities was not easily abandoned.
The transition to agriculture transformed human relationships with the environment. Farmers modified landscapes, clearing forests, diverting water, and selecting for desired plant and animal traits. Domesticated species diverged from wild ancestors, becoming dependent on human cultivation. Soil fertility required management through fallowing, rotation, or fertilization. Environmental changes both resulted from and constrained agricultural practices, creating long-term relationships between human societies and their modified landscapes.
Historical Significance
Agriculture enabled civilization’s material foundations. Food surpluses supported non-farming specialists: artisans, priests, soldiers, administrators. Dense populations required governance structures; property in land demanded legal systems; surplus accumulation enabled trade and taxation. The earliest cities, writing systems, and states emerged in agricultural societies. The very possibility of complex society rested on agriculture’s capacity to feed concentrated populations.
Yet agriculture brought costs alongside benefits. Early farmers were shorter and less healthy than hunter-gatherers, suffering from nutritional deficiencies and new diseases transmitted from domesticated animals or enabled by dense settlement. Social hierarchies emerged as some controlled land and labor while others worked for subsistence. Women’s status often declined as property inheritance and agricultural labor patterns reshaped gender relations. Environmental degradation, from deforestation to salinization of irrigated lands, plagued agricultural societies from ancient Mesopotamia onward.
The agricultural revolution’s second phase, beginning in eighteenth-century Britain, brought systematic application of scientific understanding to farming. Crop rotation, selective breeding, and later mechanization dramatically increased yields. The Green Revolution of the mid-twentieth century, combining high-yield crop varieties with fertilizers and irrigation, further expanded production, averting predicted famines but creating new dependencies on chemical inputs and fossil fuels. Contemporary agriculture faces challenges of sustainability, climate adaptation, and feeding growing populations while limiting environmental damage.
Key Developments
- c. 10,000 BCE: Wheat and barley domestication begins in Fertile Crescent
- c. 9,000 BCE: Sheep and goats domesticated in Near East
- c. 8,000 BCE: Millet cultivation begins in northern China
- c. 7,000 BCE: Rice cultivation begins in Yangtze Valley
- c. 6,500 BCE: Agriculture spreads to Mediterranean and Europe
- c. 5,000 BCE: Maize domestication in Mesoamerica
- c. 4,000 BCE: Horse domesticated on Central Asian steppe
- c. 3,500 BCE: Irrigation systems developed in Mesopotamia
- c. 3,000 BCE: Plow agriculture spreads across Eurasia
- c. 1000 BCE: Iron tools improve agricultural productivity
- c. 1700 CE: Agricultural revolution begins in Britain
- 1840s: Artificial fertilizers developed
- 1892: Gasoline tractor patented
- 1960s: Green Revolution increases yields in developing countries
- 1994: First genetically modified crops commercialized