BIG FACTS:  Approximately 11,000 bp [9000 BC or BCE]:  gradual shift from hunting/gathering to "food production"

• Independent centers of origin in Asia [including Europe]

1. Southwest Asia [Iraq]:  8500 BC
2. Southeast Asia [southeastern China]:  8000 BC

• Southern Asia importation/domestication:  ca. 7000 BC [from west] and ca. 4000 BC [from east]

BIG CONCEPTS:

"Food production" =  Agriculture [plant cultivation] and Pastoralism [animal husbandry] = AGRARIAN?

"Autocatalytism" = when two or more factors/processes work jointly to stimulate an expansion in both or all factors/processes

• pastoralism and agriculture:  tilling and fertilization

• transmission via conquest [human displacement] or via technology migration:  both occurred/occur

BIG IMPLICATIONS:

Implications [advantages?] of food production over hunting/gathering:  higher population density

• intensification:  single acre of biomass can support greater human population

• sedentarization:  shorter birth intervals, 2 years as opposed to 4, leading to urbanization

• social ramification:  possibility of food surpluses and storage thereof increases possibility of social hierarchy, namely, monarchs, bureaucrats, religious specialists, warriors, entertainers, laborers, slaves [overlapping categories] -- with additional autocatalytic process:  horse, camel, elephant become tools of warmaking, enabling pastoralist-agricultural societies to extend range of power over surrounding regions

• disease:  proximity to livestock created new human diseases [e.g., smallpox, measles, flu], and higher population densities created conditions for both incubation of disease and evolution of urban population resistance

MECHANISMS and MISCONCEPTIONS:

• Farming/herding affords greater material comforts than hunting/gathering.
• Hunter/gatherers will always take up farming/herding when confronted with it.
• Hunting/gathering is allergic to farming/herding.
• Hunter/gatherers do not practice land management.
• Hunter/gatherers do not domesticate animals.
• A particular hunter/gatherer discovered or invented farming/herding, and the rest was history....

Some factors/mechanisms:  are they causes or effects?

1. Availability of wild food?
2. Increased availability of cultivars?
3. Development of tools applicable to both hunting/gathering and farming/pastoralism?
4. Rise in population?

Indus Map:  major sites

Indus Map:  Ravi phase

Rise of Agriculture:  Jared Diamond

View of Great Bath and adjacent sites, Mohenjodaro

Street level view, Mohenjodaro

Bath/Toilet, Mohenjodaro

Toy carts, Nausharo

Boat tablet, Mohenjodaro

Unicorn seal (front), Mohenjodaro

Priest-King, Mohenjodaro
 
 

Timeline, Harappa.com
 

J. Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel:  The Fates of Human Societies (New York: Norton, 1997)

David R. Harris (ed.), The Origins and Spread of Agriculture and Pastoralism in Eurasia (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian, 1996)