The Ancient Period, Before 600 BCE: 1.2: Causes and Effects of the Neolithic Revolution (Sources 1–6)

Plant and animal domestication is the most important development in the past 13,000 years of human history. It interests all of us, scientists and non-scientists alike, because it provides most of our food today, it was prerequisite to the rise of civilization, and it transformed global demography. (Source 1)

Plant and animal domestication is the most important development in the past 13,000 years of human history. It interests all of us, scientists and non-scientists alike, because it provides most of our food today, it was prerequisite to the rise of civilization, and it transformed global demography. (Source 1)

Domestication ultimately yielded agents of conquest but arose in only a few areas of the world, and in certain of those areas earlier than in others. (Source 1)

From the homelands of domestication, food production spread around the world in either of two ways. The much less common way was for hunter–gatherers outside the homelands to acquire crops or livestock from the homelands, enabling them to settle down as farmers or herders, as attested by archaeological evidence for substantial continuity of material culture, and by genetic, linguistic and skeletal evidence of continuity of human populations. (Source 1)

From the homelands of domestication, food production spread around the world in either of two ways. The much less common way was for hunter–gatherers outside the homelands to acquire crops or livestock from the homelands, enabling them to settle down as farmers or herders, as attested by archaeological evidence for substantial continuity of material culture, and by genetic, linguistic and skeletal evidence of continuity of human populations. (Source 1)

From the homelands of domestication, food production spread around the world in either of two ways. The much less common way was for hunter–gatherers outside the homelands to acquire crops or livestock from the homelands, enabling them to settle down as farmers or herders, as attested by archaeological evidence for substantial continuity of material culture, and by genetic, linguistic and skeletal evidence of continuity of human populations. (Source 1)

The wild progenitors of crops including wheat, barley and peas are traced to the [Middle East] region. (Source 3)

In Mexico, squash cultivation began around 10,000 years ago, but corn (maize) had to wait for natural genetic mutations to be selected for in its wild ancestor, teosinte. While maize-like plants derived from teosinte appear to have been cultivated at least 9,000 years ago, the first directly dated corn cob dates only to around 5,500 years ago. (Source 3)

The introduction of dairying was a critical step in early agriculture, with milk products being rapidly adopted as a major component of the diets of prehistoric farmers and pottery-using late hunter-gatherers. (Source 4)

The processing of milk, particularly the production of cheese, would have been a critical development because it not only allowed the preservation of milk products in a non-perishable and transportable form, but also it made milk a more digestible commodity for early prehistoric farmers. (Source 4)

The finding of abundant milk residues in pottery vessels from seventh millennium sites from northwestern Anatolia provided the earliest evidence of milk processing, although the exact practice could not be explicitly defined. (Source 4)

Notably, the discovery of potsherds pierced with small holes appear at early Neolithic sites in temperate Europe in the sixth millennium BC and have been interpreted typologically as ‘cheese strainers’, although a direct association with milk processing has not yet been demonstrated. (Source 4)

Organic residues preserved in pottery vessels have provided direct evidence for early milk use in the Neolithic period in the Middle East and south-eastern Europe, north Africa, Denmark and the British Isles.... (Source 4)

Prior to the arrival of domestic cattle in Europe, prehistoric populations weren’t able to stomach raw cow milk. But at some point during the spread of farming into southeastern Europe, a mutation occurred for lactose tolerance that increased in frequency through natural selection thanks to the nourishing benefits of milk. (Source 5)

Judging from the prevalence of the milk-drinking gene in Europeans today—as high as 90 percent in populations of northern countries such as Sweden—the vast majority are descended from cow herders. (Source 5)