The Neolithic Revolution

WHAP/Napp

Complete the Cornell Notes:

Essential Questions:
1.
2.
3.
4. / Notes:
I.The Neolithic Revolution
A.Beginning around 12,000 years ago
B.Definition: Domestication of plants and animals
  1. Effects
A.Permanent settlements
B.New diseases from close proximity to animals
C.Cities, states, and sometimes empires
D.Increased impact on environment
E.More food and resources from much smaller areas
  1. Factors that Encouraged Agriculture
  1. Global warming that began 16,000 years ago
  2. Around 11,000 years ago, Ice Age was over
  3. Migration of Homo sapiens across planet
  4. New conditions for agriculture
  1. Natural flourishing of wild plants, especially cereal grasses
  1. Extinction of some large mammals
  2. Locations: occurring separately and independently
  1. Fertile Crescent
  1. Present-day Iraq, Syria, Israel, and southern Turkey
  2. After 9,000 BCE, figs, wheat, barley, rye, peas, lentils, sheep, goats, pigs, and cattle domesticated

Summaries

Essential Questions: / Notes:
  1. Use of sun-dried mud bricks
  1. Eastern part of Sahara, present-day Sudan
  1. Between 10,000 and 5,000 years ago, Sahara desert did not exist
  2. Cattle and donkey domesticated
D. Widely scattered farming practices
1- Sorghum, teff, yams, oil palm trees, okra, and kola nuts
  1. Americas
  1. Coastal Andean regions, Mesoamerica, Mississippi Valley, Amazon basin
  2. Absence of animals that could be domesticated
1-Only one (llama/alpaca) large mammal
  1. Lacked sources of protein, manure, and power that domesticated animals provided
  2. Lacked rich cereal grains
1-Had maize or corn, first domesticated in southern Mexico by 4000 to 3000 BCE
  1. North/South Orientation of Americas impacted progress of Agricultural Revolution
1-Distinct climatic and vegetation zones
  1. Spread of Agriculture
  1. Through gradual spread of agricultural techniques or colonization
1-Bantu migration
2-Austronesian expansion
  1. Culture of Agriculture
  1. Increase in population
  2. New diseases due to closer proximity to animals
  3. Permanent Settlements
  4. Technological explosion
  5. Soil erosion and deforestation
  6. Class divisions and patriarchal systems
  1. Variations
  1. Pastoral societies  dependent on animals
  2. Agricultural village societies without kings
  3. Chiefdoms inheritedpositions of power

Summaries

Strayer Questions:

  • What accounts for the emergence of agriculture after countless millennia of human life without it?
  • In what different ways did the Agricultural Revolution take shape in various parts of the world?
  • In what ways did agriculture spread? Where and why was it sometimes resisted?
  • What was revolutionary about the Agricultural Revolution?
  • What different kinds of societies emerged out of the Agricultural Revolution?

  1. Which of the following was NOT a common trait of early civilizations?
(A)Writing
(B)Formal state structures
(C)Urban life
(D)Monument building
(E)Nomadism
  1. Based on the preponderance of archaeological evidence, which region of the world saw the development of the earliest civilizations?
(A)Northern Eurasia
(B)South America
(C)Indonesia
(D)The Middle East
(E)North America
  1. Which of the following was true for ALL of the early agricultural systems?
(A)Domestication of perennial plants in each region
(B)Wheat and barley cultivation
(C)Economic activity based on raising a combination of domesticated plants and draft animals
(D)Primary reliance on pastoral forms of social organization
(E)Abandonment of sedentary agriculture /
  1. River valley civilizations, such as the Egyptians or Sumerians, developed all of the following EXCEPT
(A)Craft specialization
(B)Social stratification
(C)Constitutional monarchy
(D)Long-distance trade
(E)Complex religious rituals
  1. Compared to other revolutions in world history, which feature of the Neolithic Revolution is most unusual?
(A)Altered gender roles and relations
(B)Attenuated unfolding over thousands of years in diverse locales
(C)Impact on population growth
(D)Transformation of class relations
(E)Abandonment of previously held patterns of religious worship
  1. Surplus production
(A)Is caused by poor cultivation methods
(B)Prevents specialization of labor
(C)Gives rise to specialization and stratification of society
(D)Can never occur in modern societies
(E)None of the above

"The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race” by Jared Diamond, Prof. UCLA, May 1987, pp. 64-66 (Excerpts)

To science we owe dramatic changes in our smug self-image. Astronomy taughtus that our Earth isn't the center of the universe but merely one of billions of heavenlybodies. From biology we learned that we weren't specially created by God but evolvedalong with millions of other species. Now archaeology is demolishing another sacredbelief: that human history over the past million years has been a long tale of progress. Inparticular, recent discoveries suggest that the adoption of agriculture, supposedly ourmost decisive step toward a better life, was in many ways a catastrophe from which wehave never recovered. With agriculture came the gross social and sexual inequality, thedisease and despotism that curse our existence…

For most of our history we supported ourselves by hunting and gathering: wehunted wild animals and foraged for wild plants. It's a life that philosophers havetraditionally regarded as nasty, brutish, and short. Since no food is grown and little isstored, there is (in this view) no respite from the struggle that starts anew each day to findwild foods and avoid starving. Our escape from this misery was facilitated only 10,000years ago, when in different parts of the world people began to domesticate plants andanimals. The agricultural revolution gradually spread until today it's nearly universal andfew tribes of hunter-gatherers survive…

Are twentieth century hunter-gatherers reallyworse off than farmers? Scattered throughout the world, several dozen groups of so-calledprimitive people, like the Kalahari Bushmen, continue to support themselves thatway. It turns out that these people have plenty of leisure time, sleep a good deal, andwork less hard than their farming neighbors. For instance, the average time devoted eachweek to obtaining food is only twelve to nineteen hours for one group of Bushmen,fourteen hours or less for the Hadza nomads of Tanzania…

One straightforward example of what paleopathologists have learned fromskeletons concerns historical changes in height. Skeletons from Greece and Turkey showthat the average height of hunter-gatherers toward the end of the ice ages was agenerous 5'9" for men, 5'5" for women. With the adoption of agriculture, heightcrashed, and by 3000 B.C. had reached a low of 5'3" for men, 5’ for women.

Besides malnutrition, starvation, and epidemic diseases, farming helped bringanother curse upon humanity: deep class divisions. Hunter-gatherers have little or nostored food, and no concentrated food sources, like an orchard or a herd of cows: theylive off the wild plants and animals they obtain each day. Therefore, there can be nokings, no class of social parasites who grow fat on food seized from others. Only in afarming population could a healthy, nonproducing elite set itself above the disease-riddenmasses…

Farming may have encouraged inequality between the sexes, as well. Freed fromthe need to transport their babies during a nomadic existence, and under pressure toproduce more hands to till the fields, farming women tended to have more frequentpregnancies than their hunter-gatherer counterparts-- with consequent drains on theirhealth.