Quaestio: Was the Neolithic Revolution a positive change for humanity?

Nunc Agenda: What does it take to make this sandwich possible?

Major Questions

• What was the Neolithic Revolution?• What is domestication?• How and why did the NR happen?• What was the scope of the NR?• What are the good and bad effects of the NR?– Immediate– Long-term

Neolithic Revolution: The Basics• For thousands of years, humans lived as

nomadic hunter-gatherers• Around 8000 BCE, humans switched from

hunting and gathering to herding and farming, and from a nomadic to a settled lifestyle

• This change is called the “Neolithic Revolution” or the “Agricultural Revolution”

• This change put humans on the path to creating villages, and eventually civilizations!

• It is usually thought of as a great advantage, but it also has its downsides

Why did it happen?• Textbooks often teach that farming

started when some people one day figured out that plants grow when you plant seeds, and then suddenly people decided to farm

• This is a simplistic view that insults the intelligence of early humans, as they knew the environment well and knew how plants grew

• So why did they wait to start farming?

Environmental ChangeYounger Dryas Theory

• Around 11,000 BCE the world began to warm and glaciers shrank, and Southwest Asia (Middle East) became warmer and wetter

• Life became very easy for hunter gatherers in the Levant (region along Eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea), with grasslands full of antelope to hunt and edible grasses right next to oak and pistachio forests

• More food More population• Easy nearby food sources Settled living

(UNUSUAL! WHY?)

Environmental ChangeYounger Dryas Theory

• BUT THEN, all the way in Canada, melting glaciers caused an overflow of fresh water into the Atlantic, disrupting the current of warm water toward Europe

• This caused the Earth to cool down again for about 1000 years, bringing ice back to Europe, and creating drought in Southwest Asia

• Forests decreased, and food was harder to get nearby, so people had to protect the food that was available

Domestication• Took care of animal herds, helping them get water,

breed, found goats and sheep to be easy to control• Took care of wild grasses, watering, fertilizing, and

then planting to get more to grow• Picked the plants/animals with best qualities to

reproduce, like obedient goats and stronger wheat that would not drop its seeds naturally

• Domestication = selective breeding of plants and animals to make them more useful for humans

Add these at the bottom!!!

• Agriculture = Farming domesticated plants• Pastoralism = Herding domesticated animals• Earliest farmers still used hunting and

gathering, and farmed food was just a back up• Neolithic Revolution led to the first settled

villages, such as Jericho and Çatal Hüyük

DiscussionWas the adoption of farming plants and herding animals a positive or a

negative change for humanity?

PENSARead chapter 1 section 3 in the

textbook and complete the graphic organizer on the

Features of Civilization sheet