Neolithic Revolution: Tracing 10,000-Year-Old Human History - Essay Sample

Introduction

The Neolithic Revolution, also known as the Agrarian Revolution, is a topic that has largely contributed to the current research by agricultural and archeologists. Fundamentally, this is the period that marked the transition of human history from the simple nomadic bands of hunting and gathering, to complex agricultural settlements. Historians universally agree that the Neolithic Revolution began around 10,000 BC in the Fertile Crescent. Ideally, the Fertile Crescent was a boomerang-shaped area within the Middle-East where it is believed that the first human first discovered farming. This kind of development further led to the spread of agriculture to other parts of the world including America. While it is evident that Agriculture first developed in Mesopotamia and later spread to another part of the world, there has been unclear information about how it developed in Eastern North America (ENA). However, the archeologists have tended to use various archaeological pieces of evidence to trace how it developed. This paper, therefore, provides an exposition of the development of the Neolithic Revolution in Eastern North America.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

There is archeological evidence that has been used to prove the fact that Eastern North America was an isolated epicenter for agricultural invention. The ancient evidence of low-level food production in eastern North America started approximately about 3500 years ago during the period of the Late Archaic. People who were entering the Americas domesticated the dog and the bottle gourd, however, the domestication of new plants in eastern North America began with the squash Cucurbita pepo ssp. ovifera which was domesticated almost 4000 years by the Archaic hunters and gatherers because of its significance in fishing just like the bottle gourd, was used as a container and fishnet float. The beginning of the domestication of food crops in eastern North America began with the domestication of oily and starchy seeds, which of most them are considered as weeds today. Generally, the Neolithic revolution was an extensive transition of various human cultures from the lifestyle of hunting and gathering to the routine of agriculture and settlement.

Archeological information shows that the domestication of different kinds of plants and animals advanced in isolated areas around the world, beginning in the geographical age of the Holocene around 12,500 years (Laneri). It was the world's first truly undeniable upheaval in horticulture. The Neolithic Revolution extraordinarily limited the assorted variety of accessible foods, with a change to horticulture, which prompted a downturn in human sustenance. The Neolithic Revolution required unquestionably more than the appropriation of a restricted arrangement of nourishment creating systems. During the following centuries, it would change the little and versatile gatherings of tracker gatherers that had until now overwhelmed human pre-history into non-migrant social orders situated in developed towns and towns. These social orders profoundly changed their indigenous habitat by methods for specific nourishment crop development through the water system and deforestation which permitted broad surplus nourishment creation.

According to Smith, maize, or better known as corn, beans together with squash were some of the ancient crops that were domesticated in Mesoamerica. Even though archeologists are still making progress in the global documentation of time and places of the initial domestication of an increasing number of plants and animals even though less is known about the significant context of coalescence of various species into distinctive sets(Smith and Richard). Eastern North America has been proved to have isolated proof of single indigenous domesticated species without any sign of a crop complex. According to archeological research by Smith and Richard, five domesticated seed-bearing plants formed an articulate complex in the river valley corridors of eastern North America. The combination of an initial crop complex in eastern North America implies an integrated expansion and development of hunting and gathering lifestyles that previously existed that took place within a context of stable long-term adaptation to resource-rich river valley settings (Smith and Richard).

These advancements gave the premise to highly populated settlements, and division of work, exchanging economies, the improvement of non-convenient craftsmanship and engineering, that incorporated organizations and political structures. Individual land and private property possession prompted various leveled society, class battle, and armed forces (Laneri). The principal completely created an indication of the whole Neolithic complex is found in the Middle Eastern Sumerian urban areas whose development likewise proclaimed the start of the Bronze Age. The relationship of the previously mentioned Neolithic attributes to the beginning of farming, their succession of rising, and experimental connection to one another at different Neolithic destinations remains the subject of scholastic discussion, and fluctuates here and there, instead of being the result of general laws of social advancement.

Generally, the first cereals to be domesticated include emmer wheat, einkorn wheat, and barley, which were among the first crops to be domesticated by the Neolithic farming societies in the Fertile Crescent beside the domestication of lentils, chickpeas, peas, and flax. Neolithic farmers selected crops that were easily harvested such as wild wheat, which falls to the ground and shatters when it is ripe. Therefore, people of the early Neolithic age bred for wheat that stayed on the stem for easier harvesting. Apart from Fertile Crescent where farmers had begun to sow wheat, Asia is also another site where people had started to grow rice and millet which is evident from the archeological offcuts of Stone Age rice paddies which have been discovered by scientists in Chinese swamps, and they have been dated back to closely 7,700 years. The spread of the Neolithic transition from hunting and gathering to farming began to spread in Europe almost 5500 years ago, and the dispersal to other parts such as eastern North America occurred through two main approaches (Landon). The first model is the demic model, which implies that the spread of the Neolithic transition was due to the reproduction and dispersal of farmers. However, the second model is the cultural model, which implies that the hunter-gatherer societies transformed into farmers through the domestication of plants and animals besides the knowledge from neighboring farmers.

The transition from hunting-gathering to agriculture was not abrupt, just like in other parts of the world like Asia because it took between 5,000 and 6,500 years, and the first crop to be domesticated was Squash followed by beans and maize. One of the archeological sites that have been proved with evidence to have been the origin of agriculture in Mesoamerica is Caves in Northeastern Mexico near Ocampo, which has been proved to have evidence for the domestication of squash, beans, and maize also collectively known as the three sisters. Even though archeologists have been able to identify the archeological sites and the order of domestication throughout Europe, although the reason why the three sisters were commonly domesticated is not known. However, according to Smith, crops such as maize, beans and squash and even wheat were the first to be domesticated because they were easy to cultivate.

Some other archeological sites were identified in the wetlands by pollen records, which showed evidence of maize as compared to other areas. Domestication is likely to have started in the wetlands of Mesoamerica because of the ecological conditions of that area, which were likely to favor the growth of maize, beans, and squash. Consequently, there is a possibility that the people living in the Maya lowlands began cultivation in the wetlands during times of the dry season of the year. The evidence for cultivation in Maya during the dry season is evidenced by presence of canals and ditches which must have been constructed to drain the fields when the land became wetter, and the level of the water table rose because the canals and ditches can be traced to the time when Maya became a developed society (Smith). On the same note, research studies by archeologists have also located another site for the Neolithic revolution is the Jama Valley of Ecuador, where the domestication of plants while other resources were rich and continued to be rich after domestication. The wide variety of foods in Jama Valley were exploited which is possibly adapted in a region prone to natural disasters that would differently affect resources.

There were also ancient archeological proofs of maize that were located in San Andreas on the Gulf Coast of Tabasco; however, the maize was in the form of phytoliths, which are tiny silicon substances which are contained in plants and could be dated to 4800 BCE. Consequently, in the highlands of Oaxaca, archeologists located a maize cob in Guilanaquitz cave, which also dated to 4300 BCE. However, articulate proof for the domestication of maize was available in Oazaca and Tehuacan sites, which confirmed that maize had already undergone a significant transformation from teosinte. The information from the archeological sites although failing to provide definitive answers to the time and place when maize was initially domesticated.

The existence of archaeological and anthropological proof implies that the Neolithic revolution and the rise of agriculture were enhanced by human interaction between societies and even great distances. Agriculture in Mesoamerica experienced gradual expansion as a result of the ideal conditions, which enabled natural expansion. The origin of maize as one of the crops of the three sisters originated from teosinte, which can be dated to ancient times even before the settlement of hunter-gatherer societies. The variation of crops from agriculture resulted independently and then later spread through the formative period to the American Southwest and North America. The spread of agriculture in Mesoamerica was fostered by human actions, for instance, the self-interest of the reproduction of valuable foods. However, the ecological conditions also influenced the domestication in Mesoamerica, thus the reason why even though maize was introduced into Eastern North America as a dominant crop, other crops such as chenopods, marsh elder, and sunflower were also domesticated.

Generally, according to archeological research, eastern North America is not an independent plant center because evidence from various archeological sites proves that eastern North America was on the receiving end of domesticated crops, which originated from Mexico. According to archeological evidence, eastern North America can be considered as a separate place of origin for the invention of agriculture. The ancient proof that can be used to relate the level of food production in Eastern North America can be traced to almost 4500 years during the age of the Late Archaic. During the Neolithic revolution, the domestication of crops and animals was for the intention of creating a steady supply of food. Some of the factors that resulted in the Neolithic revolution in most parts of the world were the climatic variation and the cultural transformation besides population increase and natural evolution. The response to climate change as an approach of the Neolithic revolution is what resulted in the farming initiative and the domestication of animals, which implied that societies had to settle down from their hunter-gatherer lifestyles to farming(Smith and Richard). The neolithic revolution attributes to the natural evolution of both humans an...