How Did the Rise of Farming Around 12,000 Years Ago Spark a Major Technological Revolution? — Here’s What Researchers Found

Around 12,000 years ago, hunter-gatherers began to transition to a farming lifestyle gradually for a variety of reasons. It was one of the biggest turning points in the history of humanity, not just because it allowed our ancestors to produce their own food instead of relying on what’s readily available in nature, but because of the chain of events and innovations that followed it.

Before, hunter-gatherer human societies had to always move from one habitat to another once their resources got depleted, but with farming, they were able to settle in one place and make permanent homes. They planted crops and raised animals, leading to an abundance of a reliable food supply. From this point onward, a lot of things changed, but how exactly did this spark one of the most major technological revolutions in the entirety of our history? Let’s dive deep into this question in this article.

Better Tools and Food Processing

Once farming was more established, the new sedentary lifestyle led to population growth. This is mainly because there was a reliable source of food supply, and without the need to constantly move, humans were able to have frequent births. Settling in one territory also removes some of the threats that came from migration to a new habitat, such as predators and competition with other humans.

This meant that more infants grew into adulthood, and the chances of survival of the whole group increased. However, the population growth also put more pressure on the food production capability of farming. In other words, they needed to make it more efficient to make sure that it could support the increasing number of people. This added pressure contributed to the drive to innovate and produce technological advancements.

Additionally, with farming, the food supply grew a lot in comparison to hunter-gatherer societies, because they had an excess of resources or surplus. Along with the population growth, the surplus of food means that not everyone needs to work on the farm or in food production. It gave early humans both time and incentive to develop specialized roles to provide value in another form to the community, and it gave birth to artisans, builders, innovators, and more.

Early farmers also improved the already present stone tools, like sickles, grinding stones, knives, and axes, to help in harvesting grains or planting crops. Using these more advanced tools, they were able to process tougher types of seeds. For example, the grinding stones and mortars were developed to turn hard grains into flour or direct meals. Over time, more tools emerged with specialized functionality aimed at improving the efficiency of different tasks in the farming and agricultural society.

Read more: Wikipedia

Storage, Construction, and Infrastructure

A Complete Timeline of The Neolithic Period: The New Stone Age | Early Humans Documentary

Farming created surplus, but in order to utilize those additional resources, they must be preserved and stored in a safe location, away from wild animals and other groups. So, the people had to develop storage areas, underground pits, granaries, and a few others. Then, soon, after successfully storing a surplus of food sources, the group also built permanent homes.

This is because they needed to stay near the lands where the crops are planted and where the animals are being raised. Over time, this led to the development of the first villages. Then they created additional supporting infrastructure for specific functions, such as fences to protect the crops from wild animals, walls to keep the community safe from other groups, and better houses and storage systems to keep up with the increasing population.

To be able to do all of this, they innovated, and it has led to new forms of construction and technological advancements, like stone foundations, mud bricks, Wattle and daub, and also ceramics for making pots and storage vases. Farming also required infrastructure to manage the soil and water to keep the crops healthy. It resulted in the development of irrigation channels, canals, terraces, and drainage systems.

In other words, the agricultural societies encouraged innovations in the field of civil engineering, architecture, and hydrology long before tall buildings even existed. These early forms of structures are what set the foundation for the more complex innovations that will later be developed down the line.

Transportation, Land Management, and Scale

Another feature of farming that led to more technologies being developed is the need for transportation as the farms grew larger, because of the added pressure of an increasing population. Before, the homes were not as far away from the farming lands, but the distance soon became a much pressing problem when they expanded.

Now that the field was farther, people innovated simple transportation mechanisms to move the products to processing facilities and storehouses. They produce simple sledges, rafts, and later on, wheels to carry all the tools, harvest, and help with planting crops.

Moreover, the land has to be managed for both social and practical reasons. The boundaries of the lands owned by a particular group have to be measured and marked to avoid conflicts and disputes. It is also important in monitoring the crops and protecting them from wild animals. This led to the development of an early form of land surveying and marking.

As the village grew and as more communities developed, trading started. People now own stuff, whether it’s the surplus of food, tools they use, animals they breed, or the seeds they plant. So, when they have an abundance of one resource and a scarcity of another, they would exchange them with neighboring villages.

This trading also created another wave of innovation as the exchange required more advanced transportation, whether it was via the use of new roads, established routes on land, or using rivers and waterways. So these requirements furthered their simple technology, and to be more efficient, those transportation mechanisms were improved to be capable of carrying more resources for the exchange.

Read more: Britannica

Specialization, Learning, and Knowledge Systems

The Neolithic Revolution [HotW #2]

Because farming allowed human societies to produce more food than they needed, and the population also increased, not everyone was required to work on the farm. This time and resources gave birth to specialized roles. There were artisans who built potteries, builders who created permanent homes, laborers who built different infrastructures, and so on.

But with specialization comes unique knowledge and skillset. This means that the information and skills that emerged from the specialized role had to be passed down in order to make sure that the next generation would be able to maintain the farm’s productivity and the society’s growing complexity. This need increased the demand for that knowledge.

Before, during the hunter-gatherer era, the information needed to be passed down was not as complex, systemized, and time-dependent as agriculture, like which animals to avoid, where to get water or food, and how to make stone tools. However, with farming and agriculture, the infrastructure and knowledge to grow and maintain it became harder to just pass down to the next generation through oral words and demonstrations alone.

Examples of this knowledge include when to plant crops, which seeds work best in specific lands or periods, how to irrigate and rotate crops, and how to use and develop specialized tools. So, over many generations, this challenge encouraged human societies to create record and accounting systems, writing, and more meaningful symbolism.

Author's Final Thoughts

Farming changed human history not just because of the benefits it provides, but also because of the problems and challenges it presents that push humanity to innovate even further. It gave us a more reliable food supply, but it also caused the population to grow, adding another pressure to make the farm more productive.

Then, in this drive to make the agricultural society more efficient and be able to support the growing number of people, come new technological tools, infrastructures, and systems. These early forms of innovative advancements laid down the foundations for what would be the future civilizations.

What began as a simple seed planted led to the development of books, roads, cities, towers, and machines, marking one of the most significant technological revolutions in human history.

Read next: How Did Early Humans’ Transition to Farming Lead to the Formation of Governments Around 5,000 Years Ago? — Here’s What Historians Suggest

References & Further Reading

Greenfield, H. J. (2010). The Secondary Products Revolution: the past, the present and the future. World Archaeology. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25679726

Roffet-Salque, M., Bogucki, P. I., Pyzel, J., Sobkowiak-Tabaka, I., Grygiel, R., Szmyt, M., & Evershed, R. P. (2013). Earliest evidence for cheese making in the sixth millennium BC in northern Europe. Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature11698

Radivojević, M., Rehren, T., Kuzmanović-Cvetković, J., Jovanović, M., & Northover, P. (2010). On the origins of extractive metallurgy: New evidence from Europe. Journal of Archaeological Science. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2010.06.012

Schmandt-Besserat, D. (1986). The origins of writing. Written Communication. https://doi.org/10.1177/0741088386003001003

Kuzmin, Y. V. (2013). Origin of Old World pottery as viewed from the early 2010s: When, where and why? World Archaeology. https://doi.org/10.1080/00438243.2013.821669

Zeder, M. A. (2015). Core questions in domestication research. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1501711112