Agriculture is the science of farming, it includes the cultivation of soil for growing crops, rearing animals to provide food, wool and other products, and harvesting grown crops as effectively as possible.
It is agriculture that has allowed human civilization to expand to the great heights that it is at today, and it is agriculture that took humanity from the simple hunter-gatherer way of life to a more complex society.
The Origin of Agriculture
Agriculture was not ‘invented’ in a single flash of genius by one of our ancestors. The domestication of plants and animals happened very gradually over centuries, and often independently around the world. Though, such a development was only made possible after the last great Ice Age, when climates around the world became more stable and human populations could thrive again.
Historians have been able to track the development of agriculture in four major places around the world, the earliest signs come from the Middle East and China, before it spread into the Mediterranean and Europe and finally developed independently again in the Andes and mountains of South America. Let’s dive back into time and see how each of these civilizations used the skills of agriculture to improve their world.