The Agricultural Transition (from 10,000 BC to 3000 BC)

Edward B. Barbier

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511781131.003

2 - The Agricultural Transition (from 10,000 BC to 3000 BC)

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012

Edward B. Barbier

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Edward B. Barbier: Affiliation:
University of Wyoming

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Summary

Whereas hunter-gatherers largely live off the land in an extensive fashion, exploiting a diversity of resources over a broad area, farmers utilize the landscape intensively and create a milieu that suits their needs. A number of studies have indicated that hunters and gatherers, even in very marginal environments, spend only a few hours a day obtaining enough food to eat; farming, on the other hand, is very labor intensive and much more time consuming. So why did humans become farmers?

(Price and Gebauer 1995, pp. 3–4)

Introduction

The first epoch that we shall explore is one of the more remarkable economic transformations ever to occur in human history: the rise of agriculture and the demise of hunting and gathering. Because this process took several millennia to spread through many regions of the world, it is often referred to as the era of Agricultural Transition.

The transition to agriculture, which gradually unfolded from 10,000 BC to 3000 BC, has been described as “the most important of all human interventions to date,” even surpassing trade and manufacture in its economic significance. Almost all of today’s domestic crops and mammals originate from this era, in which agriculture first emerged as the predominant global food production system.

Type: Chapter
Information: Scarcity and Frontiers
How Economies Have Developed Through Natural Resource Exploitation
, pp. 47 - 83

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511781131.003 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2010

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