c. 10,000 BCE

Invention of Agriculture

As the climate warmed after the end of the last Ice Age, around 12,000 years ago, and much of the ice retreated, large changes in human civilization began to occur as well. Perhaps most importantly, some clans of people, especially in certain special geographic regions, discovered that a nomadic lifestyle was no longer required to sustain the food needs of their group. For example, in much of the region just east of the Mediterranean Sea, flooding of major rivers such as the Nile, Tigris, and Euphrates began to bring new water and sediments to the surrounding flood plains in regular, predictable patterns. Edible wild grains flourished, and animals began to follow predictable migratory paths. It’s no wonder that the region has come to be known as the “fertile crescent.”

Within such lush river valleys, formerly nomadic peoples could instead settle down, banking on the reliable rains, flooding, and/or migrations to essentially bring food to them. It’s not hard to imagine some entrepreneurial subset of people in such environments deciding to plant seeds in order to harvest grains, fruits, and vegetables in more easily accessible and centralized locations—the first farms. Reliable and often plentiful food sources supported growing populations in such regions, providing labor to tend even larger farms, spawning trade among groups cultivating different crops or livestock, and ultimately leading to the earliest permanent centralized architectural and political structures designed to organize and administer large groups of people—
the first cities. The fertile crescent is often called “the cradle of civilization.” Indeed, the Sumerians, who settled the fertile crescent from about 4500 to 1900 BCE, are widely regarded as the first civilization on Earth.

Similar scenarios played out around the world in the centuries that followed, with agricultural lifestyles and societies cropping up in China, Indonesia, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Americas. These transitions to agricultural societies may not have been as obviously driven by climate change as the earlier societies of the fertile crescent. Anthropologists continue to debate the importance of other factors besides climate, such as population pressure, plant and animal domestication, or even social pressures, in the emergence of agrarian lifestyles and the cultivation of crops.

SEE ALSO Domestication of Animals (c. 30,000 BCE), End of the Last “Ice Age” (c. 10,000 BCE), Population Growth (1798), Industrial Revolution (c. 1830), Controlling the Nile (1902), Genetic Engineering of Crops (1982), Large Animal Migrations (1997)

A lush valley within the “fertile crescent” in the Zagros Mountains near Dena, Iran.