Food production, the deliberate cultivation of cereal grasses and edible root plants, is a

phenomenon of the last 12,000 years of human existence, and is in the large part responsible
for the rapidly accelerating rates of population growth and culture change in the past ten
millennia. Changing environmental and demographic conditions at the end of the Ice Age, after
13,000 B.C.E., cause major term changes in the hunter-gatherer societies, for example more
localization, considerable technological innovation and a trend towards sedentary settlements in
areas with abundant and seasonally predictable food resources. A major controversy regarding
food involves its origin.

Earliest and the most known of these theories is of V. Gordon Childe’s, “Neolithic Revolution”,
wherein he proposed a major economic revolution in prehistory took place in Southwest Asia

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during a period of severe drought, it was this climate crisis which caused a symbiotic
relationship between humans and animals in a fertile oasis. These new economies ensured a
richer and more reliable food source for people who were at the edge of starvation after the end
of the Ice Age.

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Although Childe’s theory was widely accepted, it was based on inadequate archaeological and
environmental data. Robert J. Braidwood of the University of Chicago, mounted an expedition to
the Kurdish hills of Iran to test Childe’s theory, and argued that instead of climate change,
economic changes came from “ever increasing cultural differentiation and specialization of
human communities” (Braidwood and Braidwood, 1983). Hence, people were receptive to
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innovation and experimentation with the cultivation of wild grasses. He believed that Stone Age
hunters had domesticated animals and plants in nuclear zones, and he was convinced that
human capacity and enthusiasm for experimentation made it possible for people to domesticate
animals.
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Cohen formulated that it was worldwide population that caused many hunter-gatherer societies
to abandon gathering because their growing populations had reached the limit that their food
resources could support.
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Flannery has critiqued this theory since there is no evidence for very high population densities in
Southwest Asia or Mesoamerica when agriculture was taking hold and it was not the kind that
could cause chronic food shortages.
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Barbara Bender argues that some hunter-gatherer societies were becoming more socially
complex, with far more elaborate hierarchical social organization. There was also increasing
abundance of trade objects and richly decorated trade burial in pre agricultural societies, from
this she hypothesizes an expansion of trade and political alliances between neighboring groups
created new social and economic pressure to produce more and more surplus goods, which led
to sedentary lifeways.

However, her social theory tends to ignore the compelling factors of environmental changes that
were one of the key elements in areas like Southwest Asia when they were moving towards
cultivation.
Economist Ester Boserup points out that hunter-gatherers responded to favorable relationships
between densities and available resources by intensifying their hunting and gathering. However,
population growth in restricted areas with diverse resources caused food shortages due to less
mobility and less territory to move around.

Climatic changes has been invoked as a cause of food production, but although it was never
prime mover, a harsh drought or some other short term climatic shift could have a profound
effect on people’s choices of food and their ways of feeding themselves, for example what
happened at Abu Hureyra and Syria.

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Kent Flannery theories that genetic changes in the ancestors of grains made it productive and
progressively more important in the diet, and as time went on people spent more and more time
cultivating items and rescheduled their annual round accordingly, neglecting foods they had
once exploited in favor of cultivated crops. (In ref. To Mesoamerica).

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However it makes it very difficult to identify the processes that caused people to shift to
deliberate cultivation.

Brain Hayden argued that competition within complex hunter-gatherer societies like the
Natufians led to agriculture. Ambitious individuals acquire prestige and social standing by
throwing feasts which create obligations that others are unable to match. He believed that many
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of the first cultivated plants were flavorings rather than basic staples and cultivation may have
been adopted to provide supplies of essentially prized forms of food and drink.
Theories like Hayden’s are not easy to test in all the regions. However, research has been
conducted at sites like Abu Hureyra, etc. shows that one theory does not embrace all regions of
the world. The shift from plant gathering to food production was much more complicated as
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people adapted to very localized cultural and environmental challenges.

By the end of Ice Age, hunter-gatherers in subtropical zones such as southwest Asia and
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Mesoamerica were beginning to manipulate potential domesticates among wild grasses and
root species and dependance on such food came earlier in these regions since there were only
a few forageable species. In contrast, populations in more humid tropical regions did more than
just manipulate a few wild species to minimize risk, and agriculture was established in
Southwest Asia and India, because they were rich in game and wild vegetable foods. However
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for a lasting shift from foraging to agriculture, it was a prerequisite to have a strong and
sustained food resource.

Population pressure, plant distributions, changing environment and techniques of harvesting

wild grasses played their part in making agriculture work. Also to be considered are the
variations among the potentially domesticable plants and animals, some of which resisted
domestication; and the seasonal distribution of wild vegetation and games which may also have
prevented experiments in domestication. Under circumstances like these people would pursue
their traditional food-getting strategies rather than taking risks for a certain outcome.
Nonetheless, the new food-producing economies were dramatically successful, and where in
10,000 BCE, everybody in the world lived by hunting and gathering, by A.D. 1, most people
were farmers or herder. It resulted in higher population densities in many locations, since
domestication of plants and animals lead to an economic strategy that increases and stabilizes
the available food supplies.

Farmers used concentrated tracts for agriculture and grazing, much smaller than that of
hunter-gatherers. Within this small area of farming land, individual ownership and problems of
inheritance arised. Shortages of land lead to disputes and to the founding of new village
settlements on uncultivated soils.

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These enduring settlements brought changes such as portable and lightweight material
possessions of many hunter-gatherers were replaced by heavier tool kits and more lasting
houses, which lead to development of new social units, these links reflected the ownership and
inheritance of land and led to much larger settlements that brought scattered populations into

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closer and more regular contact.

Together with high population, disease, food and water supplied, and famine controlled
population also increases. In areas such as Southwest Asia, where there is seasonal rainfall,
prolonged droughts were common. Famine became possible as population densities arose. In
such cases, farmers were forced to shift their economic strategies. The earliest farmers, hence
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relied on game and wild foods to supplement their agriculture.

To conclude, even though agriculture spread rapidly in a span of only 8000 years and brought
many developments with it, there were also disadvantages that followed it, hence that did not
immediately replace the hunting, gathering and foraging attitude of the societies.
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