Neolithic Revolution
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The Neolithic Revolution was the long transition by which human groups in several regions began to cultivate plants and domesticate animals, replacing a way of life that had lasted for hundreds of thousands of years. It started independently in the Fertile Crescent about 10,000 BCE with emmer and einkorn wheat, barley, sheep, goats and cattle; rice and millet were domesticated in the Yangtze valley and north China, maize and squash in Mesoamerica, potatoes in the Andes, and sorghum in Africa. The change was gradual: at sites such as Ohalo and Jericho, wild cereals were gathered for millennia before sown fields appear. Farming produced food surplus, which allowed larger settlements, craft specialisation and hierarchies, and it required work that left its mark on skeletons, with worn teeth and compressed vertebrae. Villages grew into the first towns, storage jars and granaries multiplied, and land, once held in common, became property. The transition also brought new diseases from animals, a narrower diet, and a dependence on a few crops that could fail; but it supported the population growth from which every later city, state and writing system descends. Independent centres of plant domestication are known from at least a dozen regions, so the revolution was not a single event but a shared human experiment.