Chapter 2: The Stone Age and Early Cultures Section 3: Beginnings of Agriculture

Essential Questions: How did the development of agriculture change human society? How did the shift from hunting and gathering to agriculture lead to the development of civilizations?

I. The First Farmers The Neolithic Era, or New Stone Age, began as early as 10,000 years ago in Southwest Asia. During the Neolithic Era, the two major advancements included food production and animal domestication.

A. Plants After a warming trend brought an end to the Ice Ages, new plants began to grow in some areas. People began to settle where grains, like wheat and barley, grew. People soon learned that they could plant seeds themselves to grow their own crops.

A. Plants Historians call the shift from food gathering to food producing the Neolithic Revolution. Eventually, people learned to change plants to make them more useful. The process of changing plants or animals to make them more useful to humans is called domestication.

A. Plants The domestication of plants led to the development of agriculture, or farming and now people could produce their own food.

Discussion Question Why is the domestication of plants and animals important?

B. Animals Animal domestication was important because hunters didn’t have to follow wild herds anymore. Instead, farmers could keep sheep or goats for milk, food, and wool. Farmers could also use large animals like cattle to carry loads or to pull large tools used in farming.

Discussion Question How did farm animals contribute to early society?

II. Farming Changes Societies The Neolithic Revolution brought huge changes to people’s lives. With survival more certain, people could focus on activities other than finding food. Animal skins could be used to make clothes. Plant fibers could be used to make cloth. People began to build permanent settlements because they were able to control their own food production.

II. Farming Changes Societies With domestication, the world’s population increased and towns began to grow. Groups of people began to perform religious ceremonies and constructed huge monuments as the sites for religious gatherings. Early people probably believed in many gods and prayed to their ancestors.

Discussion Question How did farming contribute to the growth of towns?