Societies & Human Changes to the Environment

When hunter-gatherers turned into farmers, villages started. Village life A typical village was 50 people People used tools made from stone, beach pebbles, and bone They raised sheep and cattle and farmed Farmers and herders, the village’s food producers, raised surplus food. Because of the surplus, the village could divide up the work, forming SOCIAL DIVISIONS. Farmers could exchange surplus crops for meat or sheepskins.

Catal Huyuk is located in central Turkey A Neolithic town that, 9,000 years ago, was one of the world’s largest settlements. As many as 10,000 people lived here. Catal Huyuk was one of the world's first towns and its ruins demonstrate the agricultural techniques of some of the human race's first farmers.

Ruins located in Orkney Islands, north of Scotland

The world's first farmers did not have the luxury of encountering open, fertile fields wherever they wished to plant their crops. The terrain of any late, Stone Age environment would likely be overgrown with brush and weeds. Early farmers would cut what they could and then set the field on fire. Not only did this method level the ground for planting, it also fertilized the field with ashes from the burned plants.

At the high point of Catal Huyuk's existence, the plow had yet to be invented. Planting in the burned fields was likely done by tilling the land by hand. These primitive farmers probably used sticks and/or hoes to turn up the earth before spreading seed by hand. Then they covered the seeds over with the scorched soil.

After covering the seeds, the farmers of Catal Huyuk didn't just wish for luck. They had already discovered the concept of irrigation. the artificial application of water to land to assist in the production of crops.