NORTH SOUTH UNIVERSITY

Course: HIS 102 (Introduction to World Civilization)

Section- 14 (Summer 2020)

Quiz Assignment
Neolithic Revolution

Submitted to-
Abdus Samad (ABS3)

Prepared By-
Tanzila Islam
Id: 1811027042

Submission Date: 22th July 2020

 NEOLITHIC REVOULTION

Introduction:
The Neolithic Revolution, also called the Agricultural Revolution, marked the
transition in human history from small, nomadic bands of hunter-gatherers to
larger, agricultural settlements and early civilizations. It started about 10,000
B.C.

During the Neolithic era from a hunting and gathering lifestyle to one of
agriculture and settlement, making it possible for an increasingly large
population to grow. These settled communities allowed humans to study and
experiment with plants to learn how they grew and evolved.
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The Neolithic Revolution encompassed domestication of plants and animals.
This included the deliberate selection, with different characteristics, of plants
and animals to generate more opportunities for humans in the future.

Before Neolithic Era:

The Mesolithic Era, or Middle Stone Age, is an archeological term that
identifies particular civilizations falling between the Paleolithic Era and the
Neolithic. Although the Mesolithic Period beginning and ending dates differ
by geographic area, it ranges from about 10,000 BCE to 8,000 BCE. Many
Mesolithic people tended to hunt intensively, while others followed the early
stages of domestication. Some Mesolithic colonies were huts villages, some
walled towns.

The Paleolithic was an era of mere hunting and gathering but the growth of
agriculture led to the emergence of permanent settlements in the Mesolithic
Period. The later Neolithic period is characterized by the plants and animals
being domesticated.

The data suggest that hunter-gatherers have waged war during the Paleolithic
and Mesolithic periods before the Neolithic, when people lived by hunting and
gathering rather than by agriculture. Most anthropologists have believed for a
long time that hunter-gatherers were more civilized than agricultural cultures,
but that cross-cultural research does not support this.

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Neolithic Age:

The Neolithic Period started around 12,000 years ago and ended when cultures
continued to rise to around 3,500 BCE. The term Neolithic is derived from two
Greek words: neo, or new, and lithic, or stone. As such, this era of time is often
related to as the New Stone Age.

The term Neolithic or New Stone Age is most frequently used in connection
with agriculture, which is the time when cereal cultivation and animal
domestication was introduced. Neolithic humans used stone tools like their
earlier Stone Age ancestors, which evoked a poor life in small bands of hunter-
gatherers.

Causes of the Neolithic revolution:

By the close of the last Ice Age, the Planet began a warming phenomenon
around 14,000 years ago. Many scientists claim that climate change was the
driving force behind the Agricultural Revolution.
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There was no single cause that prompted humans to start farming around
12,000 years ago. The causes of the Neolithic Revolution may have differed
from region to region.

Wild wheat and barley started to grow in the Fertile Crescent, bordered on the
west by the Mediterranean Sea and on the east by the Persian Gulf as it got
warmer. In the area, pre-Neolithic people named Natufians began building
permanent houses.

The Neolithic Period started when certain groups of humans finally left the
nomadic, hunter-gatherer lifestyle to begin farming. It may have taken
hundreds or even thousands of years for humans to make a complete transition
from a lifestyle of subsistence on wild plants to small gardens and then large
crop fields.

Neolithic Human Lifestyle:

Neolithic Europe has spoken Afro-Asian, proto-sematic related. During the
Neolithic age the East Europe and North West Asia were able to speak proto-
Indo-European. I can imagine the Uralic language was then spoken across the
Urals Mountains.

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Neolithic people are skilled farmers, manufacturing a range of tools, necessary
for the tending, harvesting & processing, of crops & food production. Most
humans made their living by hunting & gathering. Woman are gathering plants,
nuts, berries, cooking the food over fire, making clothes & shelter, taking care
of children & the trivial community.

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Neolithic peoples were also skilled builders in the Levant, Anatolia, Syria,
northern Mesopotamia and Central Asia, using mud-bricks to construct houses
and villages. Houses were plastered and decorated with intricate human and
animal scenes.

Progress of Agriculture:
Agriculture moved to villages because agriculture promoted the creation of
larger and more prosperous societies than before the Neolithic period. Many
hunting humans split into small groups that included no more than 60

individuals who were unable to settle in a single location, so long as the story
did not run out. Communities formed around areas that had been cleared and
strengthened. Cereals such as wheat and barley were among the first crops
domesticated by Neolithic agricultural [Link], chickpeas, onions, and
flacks are also domesticated by the farmers.

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Sheepherding was the primary source of meat production, and gazelle shooting
became a marginal practice. Human remains show an improvement in all
adults' wear of the dents, indicating the value of ground cereal in diet.
Interestingly, since pottery has been added, tooth wear levels have declined
while the incidence of bad teeth has increased, indicating that cooked food
made from stone-ground flour has been mostly replaced with dishes such as
porridge and gruel, which have been poured into pots.

Plant domestication:
Once agriculture started gathering momentum, around 9000 BP, human
activity resulted in the selective breeding of cereal grasses (beginning with
jaggery, emmer and barley) and not just those that favored higher caloric
returns through larger seeds.

Once early farmers mastered their agricultural techniques such as irrigation

their crops produced surpluses that needed storage. Because of their migratory
lifestyle, most hunter-gatherers couldn't easily store food for long, while those
with a physically active lifestyle might store their excess grain.

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Plants with features like small seeds or bitter tastes were considered unwanted.
The first crops domesticated by Neolithic farming groups in the Fertile
Crescent included cereals such as emmer wheat, einkorn wheat, and barley.
Such early farmers have had lentils, chickpeas, peas, linseed and so on.

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Animal domestication:

Domestication is the process by which farmers select a plant or animal for

desirable traits by reproducing successive generations. A domestic species will,
over time, become different from its wild relative. Neolithic farmers selected
for easily grown crops. For starters, wild wheat falls to the earth, and when it
is mature, it shatters. Early humans were bred for wheat that would remain on
the stem for easier harvesting.

The first farm animals were domesticated by animals hunted by Neolithic

humans for meat. Household pigs were bred from wild boars, for example,
while goats came from the middle eastern ibex. Domestic animals have made
it possible to cultivate hard, physical labor while their milk and meat have
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added a variety to the human die

Effects of the Neolithic Revolution:

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Traditionally, the move to industrial food production produced a more
concentrated population, which in turn enabled larger sedentary populations,
the accumulation of products and resources, and specialization in different
types of new labor. Eventually, as resources were more available a population
could increase its scale more rapidly.

The resulting larger societies led to the development of different means of

decision making and governmental organization. Food surpluses made possible
the development of a social elite freed from labor, who dominated their
communities and monopolized decision-making.

There were deep social divisions and inequality between the sexes, with
women’s status declining as men took on greater roles as leaders and warriors.
Social class was determined by occupation, with farmers and craftsmen at the
lower end, and priests and warriors at the higher.

Technological consequences of the Neolithic Revolution:

The advancement of technology was another major consequence of the

Neolithic Revolution. The appearance of large human settlements has given
rise to a social group engaged in the production of tools and other goods.

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The growing demand for better agricultural tools and weapons, as well as
contacts among communities, enabled people to exchange their inventions,
and brought about systematic development of new technologies.

The Neolithic Revolution led to the rapid and systemic growth of human
societies through technology. This cycle started with the use of river floods and
forest burning for farming, grinding stone, building tools that became much
more effective and leading to the creation of complex irrigation systems and
the implementation of different land management techniques.

Conclusion:

The Neolithic Revolution is the first in the history of the human race that, due
to a radical change in lifestyle, has made it possible for the human race to
develop systematically. Moreover, this revolutionary change seems to have
provided the basis for the subsequent revolutions, which mark the further stages
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of the development of our human civilization, the scientific revolution, the
industrial revolution, the technological revolution, the digital revolution and
the nanotechnology revolution.

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