The Agricultural Revolution

What

The Agricultural Revolution is about the history of how humans evolved and the changes that humans made over the years as we started to learn and experiment. A People's History of the World is painting me a background that starts from the stone age to the new millenium.

When

Humans were first around roughly 10,000 years ago (Harman p. 2).

Where

The agricultural revolution started over in Africa.

Who

Humans are the ones that started the revolution due to climate change.

Causes (How and Why)

The early stages of human life started to realise that there is more than just Africa. Humans soon made their way around the world which at the time was very different from the way the world looks today. Splitting up into groups up to 40 humans and creating materials that would help the hunters or gatherers get what they would need (fruit, nuts, berries, fish, shellfish and so forth). Splitting up into groups gave them all different genetics, making the skin tones different, eye color...etc. Each group had different communication to one another that they had created. Usually women did the gathering and the men did the hunting, of course women would do hunting and the children too. If a female was pregnant or was feeding her child, it would be too risky for her to venture out to hunt and help the groups, so she would help by gathering. This is where (I think) hunter gatherers got their name. Along with that the groups carried only what they could carry, and what other weapons they might have had for hunting (like spears, or bow and arrow).

8/28/20 Before class The early stages of human life started to realise that there is more than just Africa. Humans soon made their way around the world which at the time was very different from the way the world looks today. Dividing up into groups up to 40 humans and creating materials that would help the hunters or gatherers get what they would need (fruit, nuts, berries, fish, shellfish and so forth). Dividing up into groups started all different genetics, making the skin tones different, eye color...etc. Each group had different communication to one another that they had created. Usually women did the gathering and the men did the hunting, of course women would do hunting and the children too.

But if a woman was pregnant or was feeding her child, it would be too risky for her to venture out to hunt and help the groups, so she would help by gathering. This is where (I think) hunter gatherers got their name. Groups carried only what they could carry, and what other weapons they might have had for hunting (like spears, or bow and arrow).

8/31/20 First chapter hunter gatherers were actually forced into the agricultural revolution (which is apparently also called Neolithic ‘revolution’). (Harman pp 10-11).

The reason why is because of climate change, the earth was still changing 10,000 years ago there was climate change back then too. Which brought the hunter gatherers to start villages rather than camps, and they had to start feeding and catching animals rather than hunt for animals, they had to start growing food because they could no longer rely on nature to have everything when they need it. This led them to experimenting with plants and they soon knew which plants were edible and the ones that were poisonous. Along with breeding the plants to grow different fruits, herbs, vegetables, nuts...

9/1/20 Thousands of years passed and nothing seemed to change. No classes were made yet, no state authority, men weren’t the dominant ones over females. None of that happened even in 4000 BC (Harman p. 10). Humans shared their food with each other, if someone's family needed food (especially if they have lots of kids) everyone in the village would share their supplies of food. "No one in a Nuer village starves unless all are starving (Harman p. 12)." Now you might be wondering, what is a Nuer village? I did some research and found out this: During the rains Nuer live in villages perched on the backs of knolls (hills) and ridges or dotted over stretches of slightly elevated ground, and engage in the cultivation of millet and maize (grains). The country which intervenes between village and village, being more. (I found this info at: nuer - Instruct or instruct.uwo.ca)

Groups were made and they all had their own ways of doing things to live and progressed in their own ways. Some groups were hunter gatherers, others farmers, and so on. The hunter gatherers were at peace and had never really gone to the outside world...insert a spaceuntil later in the 1930s some hunter gatherers were ‘discovered’ by Westerners.

(Sentence on page: 14, Book: A PEOPLE’S HISTORY OF THE WORLD, by: Chris Harman, Published by: Verso 2008)

9/10/20 Seeming as Chris Harman puts it, warfare started to increase. The reason why warfare would happen, would be from lack of food...but why? If you were in agricultural societies then wouldn’t you be able to hunt and feed everyone? Some agricultural societies would bring weapons to battles, so why couldn’t they hunt? Were there less animals in the area? Did predators become a nuisance, creating a difficulty for food? If you lost crops why couldn’t you move a crop somewhere else? Or maybe restart? Did there have to be a war? Did the hunger get to their heads and they started to just attack without thinking, except for the words in bold ‘MUST HAVE FOOD, ATTACK’? ...Why?

Effects

The planet (Earth) is changing today, and it was also changing 10,000 years ago. You know, back when the iceage started and when the tempetures were sub zero? Today though we face the problem of the heat. There's climate change now and there was climate change back a millenia too.

Now, the reason why we are where we are today is because of climate change. Food would become scarce in different areas and times of the year, and carbohydrates would not be available due to lack of sun (maybe) or temperatures.

Literary Treatments

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Performance Arts

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Visual Arts

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Bibliography

Harman, Chris.

"Before Class." A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE WORLD

Originally published by Bookmarks 1999

UK: 6 Meard Street, London W1F 0EG : Verso, 2017

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