What are the origins of agriculture?

Humanity, as we know it today, would not have been possible if our species had not would have made the transition from nomadic hunter-gatherer peoples to sedentary peoples farmers.

Agriculture has been crucial for human beings to survive without depending on the elements. However, it is also because of agriculture that we live in societies with social and economic inequalities.

Next we will discover what are the origins of agriculture, how it was made over the millennia and how it has influenced the development of modern civilizations.

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How was the origin of agriculture?

The appearance of agriculture is considered one of the most revolutionary processes in the history of humanity. Thanks to the cultivation of vegetables for human consumption, our species stopped depending totally on the elements to start controlling them. With agriculture, human beings were no longer subject to how benign and generous nature was, and began to directly exercise control and dominance over it.

The first humans were nomads and subsisted on hunting and gathering wild vegetables. They survived by exploiting the resources of a region, hunting their animals and gathering their fruits. As in many cases the fruits were toxic or they were not sure if they were for human consumption, the nomadic peoples directly preferred to hunt animals, however unappetizing and nutritious they might be. Edible vegetables were a rare commodity in the wild.

After spending several days or weeks in the same area, resources began to run low. To avoid starvation they could not wait for that region to naturally replenish itself: the time had come to emigrate again. So that, the Homo sapiens The ancients were constantly on the move, searching for new regions. where you can spend a few weeks and continue to live, always under the threat of chronic hunger.

Because they were constantly on the move, they rarely noticed how the environment changed over time. The first nomadic peoples did not have enough time to see how one of the pips of the fruit they had eaten fell to the ground and receiving rainwater, it germinated forming a shoot that, over the months or even years, would become a tree fruity. Before that tree had grown, the town that accidentally planted it was already far away, looking for a new place to live.

This is why it is believed that the most primitive human beings associated the growth of vegetables with magical forces. Hunter-gatherer societies, by not paying enough attention to how seeds germinated, they had not related the idea that a new plant could grow from a seed. Surely, they thought that all the fruit trees they found were there by pure chance, having grown spontaneously and thanks to the designs of forest spirits. How did it come about?

Normally, when we talk about agriculture, it is understood by all the techniques that imply the action of cultivating more or less domesticated plants, with or without the help of domesticated animals. The task of the farmers is to sow, cultivate and harvest plants from which they will obtain food, fabrics, wood and natural remedies. Despite the fact that this definition is the most accepted, it has not prevented a wide debate on what should be considered as the first agricultural techniques and who performed them.

Either way, For agriculture to resemble what we know today, many attempts were necessary., the use of intelligence, observation and patience. It took many years, even millennia, for the human species to come to make domestic varieties of plants that today Nowadays they cannot be missing in any home, such as corn, rice, wheat, all kinds of fruits or the cotton that we use in many garments.

Traditionally it was thought that agriculture arose by chance. The first farmers “invented” agriculture without really knowing what they were doing. At some point they must have seen how an accidentally buried seed turned into a small sprout and, later, into a plant with the same fruits than those who had the plant of the fruit to which that pip belonged and, thus, discovered by pure chance how to sow, cultivate and harvest all kinds of vegetables.

However, the scientific community has been critical of this belief. The first agricultural techniques seem to be too complex to consider that they were due to mere chance. Naturally, in all learning there is a certain component of trial and error, however, figuring out how and when to plant different varieties of plants, when to water them and when to harvest them must have been the product of extensive and meticulous observation.

Another of the controversial ideas about the origins of agriculture is gender differences. For a long time the idea that men went hunting and women gathered fruits and took care of the little ones has been accepted. At some point, these women, who had direct contact with the vegetables, observed how the seeds grew when they fell to the ground and spent a few days, being they the discoverers of the agriculture. Since the idea that there were marked gender differences in terms of roles within the nomadic villages is questioned, this idea has been questioned.

Be that as it may, what is clear is that the first farmers were experimenting with plant varieties and how to obtain better fruits. They must have seen that the seeds of better plants gave rise to good daughter plants and, if they were crossed with other varieties, they could obtain new types of plants with more flesh, less shell, smaller seeds, better quality wood, or stronger tissues. resistant. With the birth of agriculture came artificial selection.. The first agricultural peoples, without even knowing what evolution was, exercised it on their own crops.

Where and when did agriculture emerge?

Surprising as it may seem, agriculture did not arise in one place. Different human populations came to develop the first agricultural techniques on their own, sharing many features without even knowing that other parts of the world were doing the same.

They may have grown different cereals and fruits, but in many cases the techniques, tools and the way in which they did it were very similar. It is as if agriculture, rather than an invention or discovery, was a natural step in human evolution, along with bipedalism and the development of language.

Although the chronology of the appearance and development of agriculture is debated, it is more or less accepted that the The first agricultural behaviors must have occurred around 30,000 years ago, although they must have been very rudimentary and experimental. Between 20,000 and 30,000 years ago, people from different parts of the world began to take care of and then plant wild plants that were of some interest for food, medicine or obtaining fiber and wood.

Subsequently, they selected the seeds of the best plants and, little by little, with the passing of generations and applying artificial selection, plant species began to be domesticated. However, These techniques were not something widespread at all, since the Earth was in an ice age and it would not be until 15,000 years ago that it would end, making the climate milder and more suitable for plants. Before the end of this period it was not possible to intentionally grow plants that would have even the slightest chance of surviving the elements.

Between 10,000 and 12,000 years ago, plants that could be considered domesticated were already being cultivated in the Neolithic. The human being enjoyed highly productive crops, ceasing to depend on how generous nature was and leaving behind the constant threat of hunger. It is around this time that we can identify four regions with developed agricultural techniques: the Fertile Crescent, current Iran, Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Israel, Egypt, Lebanon and Turkey; China, New Guinea and Mesoamerica, mainly Mexico and Central America.

Some 2,000 or 4,000 years later, the domestication of crops was already a worldwide phenomenon. There are eight new regions in which agricultural techniques were applied: African Sahel, Ethiopia, West Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Southeast of North America, the Central Andes (Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador and Northern Chile and Argentina) and the Amazon (Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador and Peru).

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Historical consequences of agriculture

Agriculture gave way to livestock. Thanks to being able to grow vegetables, the human being not only did he obtain a more or less stable food source for human consumption, but he could also select more suitable varieties for animal consumption. Applying the same processes of domestication in animals, varieties of chickens, pigs, dogs, cows and goats useful for people were obtained. Some of these animals became bigger, with better meat, better milk or, as in the case of the dog, they were more faithful, using them for hunting.

After all these processes, the human being gradually acquired the idea that whoever works on a piece of land is the owner of it, and everything they obtain from it is theirs. Agriculture is not only associated with a new production system and increased survival, but also with the idea of ​​ownership. The fruits of the earth are for those who have cultivated them, their families and other members of the village, not for those who are alien to it. The idea of ​​belonging to a territory arises, in addition to the psychological notion of the ingroup and the outgroup.

Power and influence in the village no longer depends solely on the strength of men or women. Now, who has more influence is the one who has cultivated a land that has given him many fruits. When more food is produced, less hunger is experienced and, furthermore, it is easier to exchange other products, be it food, jewelry or tools, with other farmers. Exchange and wealth arose and, in turn, the first classes and estates began to emerge, in short, social inequalities emerged.

As they have settled and cultivate the land, there is an improvement in living conditions. A better diet implies a longer life expectancy and lower infant mortality, making the towns have more and more inhabitants. The larger the size, the more complex the social interactions are and, to prevent anarchy from reigning, the first governments emerge.. This, little by little, will give rise to complex civilizations, such as China, Mesopotamia, Egypt or India. In short, without agriculture humanity would not be as we know it today.

Bibliographic references:.

• Tayles, N., Domett, K., & Nelsen, K. (2000). Agriculture and dental caries? The case of rice in prehistoric Southeast Asia. World Archaeology, 32(1): pp. 68- 83.
• Bar Yosef, O. and Meadows, R. H (1995). The origins of agriculture in the Near East. In T. d. Price and A. Gebauer (eds) Last Hunters – First Farmers: New Perspectives on the Prehistoric Transition to Agriculture: pp. 39 - 94.