How Has Agriculture Changed Over The Years

Agriculture has been around for over 10,000 years. Now something that has survived that long has to be important. In fact over 50% of the world's workforce is involved in some kind of agricultural job. Agriculture provides the world with most of its food, construction materials, fabrics, and paper products.

Before people started farming they were hunter-gatherers, moving around from place to place following the food. However this was very inefficient and they never had surplus food to get them through famines or hard winters. Then over 10,000 years ago people discovered that they could plant these things in large numbers and get much more food. Now this revolution didn't happen all at once it took thousands of years in some places. Farming

You see, in order to get the best harvest possible people had to change the plants they planted. This change is called domestication and it happened to many of the plant species that we see today in our modern fields. One of the first plants to be domesticated was probably rice or wheat. However many other plants followed soon after. Such as millet, barley, squash, and various legumes. But this isn't all that the ancient peoples did to plants, they also started selectively breeding them to get the best characteristics they could.

Plants weren't the only things to be domesticated though, animals were also domesticated. Though not always for the same reasons. Dogs are thought to have been the first animals to be domesticated, probably for hunting purposes. Other animals to be domesticated were llamas and alpacas in south america, horses in ukraine, sheep in northern iraq, and pigs in thailand and thessaly.

Not only have the animals and plants been changed but the tools used to care for them have also changed. The earliest tools were made of wood and stone, sometimes animal bone. As the years progressed and discoveries were made people started making tools out of metals such as copper, iron, bronze, and eventually