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Emergence of Agriculture

Agricultural Revolution Student Module, “Emergence of Agriculture” (Law 1996c)

1. When and why did agriculture emerge as a way of life?

 

 

2. Why is agriculture necessary to the development of civilization?

 

 

 

3. What are some of the advantages of sedentism as a way of life?

 

 

 

4. What are some of the problems that peoples adapting to a sedentary agricultural life have to overcome? For example:

1. Why do agriculturists tend to have larger families than hunter-gatherers?

    

    

    

2. Why are agricultural villages more vulnerable—and inviting—to attack than villages of hunter-gatherers?

    

    

    

    

3. How did early agriculturists deal with the problem of security? How did they protect the fruits of their labor?

    

    

    

    

4. Why were early agriculturists particularly vulnerable to disease?

    

    

    

5. Why were some of the earliest agricultural sites eventually abandoned by their inhabitants?

    

    

    

6. To what extent have these problems been solved?

 

 

 

Technology

1. What were the technological changes necessary to sustain the new sedentary, agricultural mode of life?

 

 

 

2. What were the cultural changes necessary?

 

 

 

3. What are some of the advantages of economic specialization? Why did it begin to occur shortly after agriculture emerged as a way of life?

 

 

 

Domestication

1. What are the characteristic plants and animals exploited by the early regional civilizations [the Near East, South Asia, the Far East, sub-Sahara Africa, North and South America]?

 

 

 

2. How did Old World agriculturists remedy the inadequacies of a diet based on barley, wheat, or millet?

 

 

 

3. Why is Old World agriculture, unlike New World (ancient American) agriculture, always associated with domesticated animals?

 

 

 

Social Consequences

1. Why do agricultural societies typically tend require more social discipline and allow less individual freedom than hunter-gatherer communities?

 

 

 

2. Why do social hierarchies and elites tend to develop in settled agricultural communities?

 

 

 

3. What are the advantages of developing elites and class divisions? What are the disadvantages?

 

 

 

4. What is the relationship between civilization and war?

 

 

 

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