NRES 700

Origins of Agriculture

Agriculture is defined as plant or animal cultivation under conditions controlled by people. Before the beginning of agriculture, people subsisted by hunting and gathering. Several theories of the origin of agriculture have been postulated.

The "dump heap" theory of agricultural origin suggested that seeds of edible plants were unintentionally planted in dump heaps near campsites while another theory suggested that agriculture began as a conscious imitation of natural processes of plant reproduction by seed or vegetative propagation. Read Jared Diamond, a Pulitzer Prize winning author of Germs, Guns, and Steel # Location, Location, Location: The First Farmers

Based from archaeological evidence, agriculture seemed to have originated about 10,000-12,000 years ago. The eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea (Syria, Israel, Jordan and perhaps Egypt) had been postulated as the earliest site of agriculture and thus is known as the Cradle of Agriculture or the Fertile Crescent. However, the practice of cultivation seemed to have begun at around the same time in other parts of the world. In the New World, fossils of pumpkins and gourds had suggested that cultivation might have started between 7000 and 9000 years ago. Some authors believed that agriculture began in an area and diffused to other parts of the world while others believed that agriculture arose independently in several areas of the world.

Several major centers of origin of agriculture, where different species of plants were domesticated, include the following:

A. The Near East Center also known as the "fertile crescent" of Mesopotamia (includes parts of Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, and Israel) is the site of wheat, barley, lentils, chickpeas, melons, olives, walnuts, and pistachios domestication.

B. The Eastern Asia (includes China, Thailand, and India) is the site of rice, various beans such as soybeans and mung beans, bamboo, oranges domestication.

C. The Mesoamerican Center (modern day Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, Honduras) is the site of corn (maize), the common bean, squash and pumpkins, chili peppers, and tomatoes domestication.

D. The Andean South America is the site of potatoes, common and lima beans, squash, chili peppers (independent from Mesoamerican) domestication.

E. Other areas in tropical America, Africa and in the Pacific Islands where root crops such as taro in the Pacific, sweet potatoes and cassava in tropical South America and yams in Africa have been domesticated.

Why farm?

One of the most widely debated question is not where the precise origin of agriculture was, but why humans at around the same time in history, suddenly adopted cultivation as a way of life.

1) One suggestion is that agriculture is a natural progression of civilization from primitive cultures to modern technological society. This was the common notion of the nineteenth and early twentieth century where primitive humans were perceived as living a deprived life and that the progress of civilization is akin to that of a series of revolutions which led to a better stage in cultural evolution. However, in-depth studies of modern nonagricultural people and better dating of fossil material had indicated that agriculture was not a sudden discovery. Neither was it true that primitive societies deprived nor was it evident that primitive agriculture improved the well-being of humans.

2) Another suggestion is agriculture came about because humans were forced to cultivate for their livelihood. But what was it that caused them to do so? Carl Sauer, one of the leading advocate of the theory that humans began to cultivate crops because it best served their needs suggested that people became sedentary before turning to agriculture. Once settled, foraging for wild plants for food meant going farther and farther distances from settlements that eventually rendered it impractical to remain a forager. Thus, the idea of raising and maintaining a permanent food supply in an area close to the settlement made more sense.

3) A theory that currently gets the most attention at the moment suggested that humans started out gathering and storing wild grasses. Once a supply is stored, to stay and protect the stored food supply became a necessity. Food surpluses gave way to population increases which in turn might have led to population sizes that were too large to depend solely on gathering wild grain. This theory is based on studies of modern nonagricultural people, however, it does assume that the modern hunter-gatherer society of today is similar in many respects to ancient nonagricultural peoples. Furthermore, there was no evidence of large population pressures 10,000 years ago.

Studies by Lee of the !Kung bushmen of the Kalahari desert of South Africa found that these hunter gatherers do not lead lives of hardships nor do they seem to suffer from any malnutrition as a result of their life styles. The !Kung recognize about 105 species of edible plants of which 14 are most preferred in their diet. Their diet consists of 96 g of protein and 2355 calories per day. In comparison the diet for a modern 154 lb male is 40 g of protein and 2,700 calories per day, the !Kung diet is very good. Furthermore, to achieve such a diet the !Kung only spend 2.5 days per week for food acquisition. Thus, it does seem that switching to agriculture did not necessarily mean more leisure time. The !Kung seemed very knowledgeable about the plants and the ecology of their environment but when asked why they did not grow more plants on purpose, their answer was "Why?".

In the Americas, the two major centers of agriculture development are Mexico and South America with North America as a distant third. In Mexico, the principal crops that were developed were maize and beans. The Aztec and Mayan civilizations in Mexico considered maize or corn as a deity. The Andean region of South America, where the Inca civilization dominated for centuries, potato was domesticated along with cacao or chocolate. In the North America Center, only a few local plant species such as cranberries, pecans, pine nuts, and amaranths were domesticated.

Very few examples of domesticated animals species were found except for the llama, which was the domesticated animal product of the South American Center. Tobacco was widely cultivated as a mild narcotic.

If you would like more general information on origins of agriculture, click on and visit the following optional links: The origins of agriculture: A biological perspective and a new hypothesis

Be sure to check out this intriguing UW-Madison, Why Files on First Farmers.

PLANTS IN AGRICULTURAL HISTORY