About 12,000 years ago, human communities started to function very differently than in the past. Rather than relying primarily on hunting or gathering food, many societies created systems for producing food. By about 10,000 BCE, humans began to establish agricultural villages.
This had massive ramifications on the social sphere, marking an important departure from past social systems; people lived in larger, denser, and more permanent settlements, and not everyone had to devote their full time to food production. Since there was no need for all residents to devote themselves full time to producing food, specialization within society was made possible. Thus, surplus food, food that did not go directly to farmers’ families, was distributed to members of the society.
Another notable effect of this new social order was the evolution of the idea of ownership; contrary to migrating hunter-gatherer bands, farmers invested a great deal of their time and energy in cultivating specific areas of land, and as such they were attached to them. As this likely lead to disputes, strong leaders and codes of conduct evolved in response.
The advent of agriculture did not happen simultaneously and completely everywhere in the world; some communities adopted farming earlier or more fully than others, and some did not adopt it at all. Despite this variability, however, farming undeniably revolutionized human history. Farming settlements spread rapidly all over the world; humans had foraged for over a million years, and yet, within the last 12,000 years, farming has replaced foraging almost entirely. Very few foraging-based systems survive to this day.
What kinds of social changes resulted from this transformation of food production? The surplus food that agricultural systems could generate allowed for people to live in larger, more permanent villages. Villages were more productive not only agriculturally but creatively. People produced textiles, pottery, buildings, tools, metal work, sculptures, and painting, which were both directly tied to agriculture and to settlement in bigger villages.
A piece of pottery with a geometric design. It is a vessel with a narrow mouth and a wide base, featuring stripes and zig-zag designs in a contrasting dark color on a tan neutral background.
A piece of pottery with a geometric design. It is a vessel with a narrow mouth and a wide base, featuring stripes and zig-zag designs in a contrasting dark color on a tan neutral background.
Vessel from Mesopotamia, late Ubaid period (4,500–4,000 BCE). Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
Farming began a process of intensification, which meant that many more people could be sustained in a given land area since more calories could be produced per acre. As a result, the world population rapidly rose. Between 10,000 and 1000 BCE, the population of the world went from about 6 million to about 120 million. With more people, societies needed to change in unprecedented ways and become more sophisticated with how they organized human life.
While the agricultural revolution certainly had something to do with the development of increasingly complex societies, there is considerable debate about why some agricultural societies ultimately developed into advanced civilizations while others did not. Indeed, in some cases, it seems like complex political orders were the cause rather than the consequence of the development of agricultural systems. Historians and anthropologists are still trying to understand what other variables were at play, such as large-scale irrigation projects, warfare, trade, geography, and competition. Each society grew more complex in response to its own set of environmental, social, and political stimuli.
