In A Short History of the World J. M. Roberts argues, “The Coming of Agriculture changed life so much and so deeply that nothing since would have been possible without it” (Roberts 1993, 22). Prior to the emergence of agriculture, and "for most of human history, people lived in relatively small groups, gathering, fishing, and hunting what they needed from their immediate environments" (Goucher and Walton 2013, 36). Because of the unpredictable nature of this way of life, hunting, gathering and fishing could not sustain large groups of people for extended periods of time. Seasonal influences, animal migrations or even human pressures on the environment often forced people to move their settlements to areas that could sustain their survival. On a larger scale, migrations were typically precipitated by factors including: changes in climate such as recession of glacial ice, population increases that exhausted or stressed natural resources, sudden ecological changes caused by floods and volcanoes and the emergence of technologies such as communication, use of tools and metals, and the advent of agriculture.
Over time, as humans' relationships to their environment changed, their subsistence strategies had to change. Climatic changes that produced droughts in once fertile and productive areas made it impossible for hunting and gathering people to maintain their mobile way of life. Being forced to stay close to any source of water they could find, they began planting fields of wheat and barley around them (Guns, Germs and Steel, 2005). Increased production of grain required the development of storage technologies which would then permit people to store their grains for long periods of time. Production and storage of grains allowed peop...
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... revolution are felt even today as most of civilization is concerned with innovation, commerce and politics and can leave matters of basic sustenance to the select part of society that ensures it is always available for our consumption. Success, to most, is no longer defined by survival, but by surplus.
Bibliography
Goucher, Candice, and Linda Walton. World History: Journeys from Past to Present. New York: Routledge, 2013.
Guns, Germs and Steel. Directed by Tim Lambert. National Geographic Television and Film. 2005.
*Roberts, J. M. A Short History of the World. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Sundermann, Elizabeth. Agriculture and Urban Revolutions. Class lecture, University of Washington, Tacoma, WA, April 16, 2014.
*I cited this source only because I incorporated the quote from the prompt, not because I referenced the source.
Tignor, R., Adelman, J., Brown, P., Elman, B. A., Liu, X., Pittman, H., & Shaw, B. D. (2011). Worlds together, worlds apart A history of the world: V. 1 (3rd ed., Vol. 1). New York: WW Norton &.
Upshur, Jiu-Hwa, Janice J. Terry, Jim Holoka, Richard D. Goff, and George H. Cassar. Thomson advantage Books World History. Compact 4th edition ed. Vol. Comprehensive volume. Belmont: Thompson Wadsworth, 2005. 107-109. Print.
Flory, Harriette, and Samuel Jenike. A World History: The Modern World. Volume 2. White Plains, NY: Longman, 1992. 42.
...is, Elisabeth Gaynor., and Anthony Esler. World History Connections to Today. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1999. Print.
12,000 years ago, the discovery of agriculture triggered such a change in society and the way in which people lived that we now call this important era in time the “Neolithic Revolution.” Traditional hunter-gatherer lifestyles were cast away in favor of more permanent settlements and a reliable food supply. Agriculture helped form cities and civilizations, and because crops and animals could now be farmed to meet growing demand, populations skyrocketed from around five million people 10,000 years ago, to more the more than seven billion people that walk this earth today.1
Schroeder, Michael. “Major Themes in World History.” Encyclopedia of World History. Modern World History Online. Web. 20 Mar. 2012. .
In his short article “World History as a Way of Thinking” Eric Lane Martin, “…argue[s] that the most important things the field of world history has to offer the researcher, teacher, student, and general public are the conceptual tools required for understanding complex global processes and problems.” Anyone who follows the evening news or shops at Wal-mart, has encountered the processes and problems Martin speaks of. Our modern society puts pressure on a variety of citizens to grapple with and attempt to understand issues on a scale that moves beyond the local and national. History has long been a tool utilized by scholars, politicians and citizens to help them put current day happenings into context. That context has allowed for a deeper understanding of the present day. In an era when the issues cross national and regional boundaries the need for a different scale of history has become apparent. World history has emerged as a relatively new discipline within academia that is attempting to provide the context for large-scale processes and problems. As the field has grown a variety of authors, some historians, some from other fields, have attempted to write a history of the world. With such a daunting task how can we define success? How can we analyze the history that provides a true global perspective on processes and problems we face? By taking Martin’s two key characteristics of world history, one, it is defined by the kinds of questions it asks and two, it is defined by the problem-solving techniques it uses, we can analyze texts purporting to be world history and access their utility in providing context for the global processes and problems we face today.
Authors, Various. The Origins Of Civilizations, "The Agrarian Revolution And The Birth Of Civilization." Last modified 2007. Accessed March 23, 2012. http://history-world.org/neolithic.htm.
Ellis, Elizabeth Gaynor, and Anthony Esler. World History: The Modern Era. Boston: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2007. Print.
GCSE Modern World History. 2nd ed. of the book. 1996. The. London: John Murray, 2001. Print.
The blessing and curse of the Agricultural Revolution is advocated with its augmentation and dissemination. Taking the stipulative definition of “blessing” and “curse” from the original premise, one can only superimpose the layman’s terms of “negative” and “positive”. Upon examination of the two classifications within the Neolithic Period and ancient Mesopotamian civilization one can confirm the premise. Therefore, the agriculture revolution was a blessing and a curse for humanity. Human society began to emerge in the Neolithic Period or the New Stone Age. This new age began around 9,000 B.C.E. by the development of agriculture in the region surrounding the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and what is commonly referred to as “The Fertile Crescent” located in West Asia.1 The very development of agriculture had benefited humans by no longer having to move about in search of wild game and plants. Unencumbered by nomadic life humans found little need to limit family size and possessions and settled in a single location for many years. One negative aspect of this settling is that the population increased so much so that wild food sources were no longer sufficient to support large groups. Forced to survive by any means necessary they discovered using seeds of the most productive plants and clearing weeds enhanced their yield.2 This also lead humans to develop a wider array of tools far superior to the tools previously used in the Paleolithic Period or Old Stone Age. The spread of the Agricultural Revolution in the Neolithic Period also cultivated positive aspects by creating connections with other cultures and societies. Through these connections they exchanged knowledge, goods, and ideas on herding and farming.3 Another major positive aspec...
Plato once quoted, “Necessity is the mother of invention”. During the Prehistoric era, early humans needed to survive in the environment around them, thus creating close-knit nomadic hunter-gathers. With the rise of the Agricultural Revolution, early humans adapted new ways of finding food creating food surpluses that started a population boom. From farming villages to major cities, it created civilizations that once rose and fell. These civilizations created a large impact that affects today.
Cipolla calls it the first great economic revolution (Cipolla 18). The development of agriculture leads to the development of communities, city-states, civilizations, and other settlements. The social structure that formed around agriculture brought about the possibility of specialization within a society, since not everyone had to hunt and gather all the time. Instead of living in an ecologically sustainable manner like the hunter/gatherers, people started living in an economic manner (Southwick 128). Specialization enabled the development of social institutions such as religion and government, and agriculture necessitated the development of irrigation.
It is to be noted that farmers in England are among the most productive farmers in the world. The new methods of farming brought mass production in the early 18th century, leading to the Agricultural revolution. “In the early eighteenth century, Britain exported wheat, rising from 49,000 quarters in 1700 to a massive peak of 950,000 quarters in 1750”. The whole benefit of the Agricultural revolution was shared among aristocratic landholders. They were the only top authorities, as the English throne was already overthrown by the aristocratic class in 1688 during the Glorious Revolution.... ...
Duiker, William J. , and Jackson J. Spielvogel. World History . 6th. Boston, MA: Wadsworth Pub Co, 2010. print.