Last Hunters, First Farmers: New Perspectives on the Prehistoric Transition to Agriculture (School for Advanced Research Advanced Seminar Series)

During the four-million-year history of mankind on this planet, humans have been hunters and gatherers, dependent for food on wild plants and animals. About 10,000 years ago, the most remarkable phenomenon in human prehistory was set in motion. Around the world, over a period of 5000 years, hunters became farmers. The implications of this revolution in human activity and social organization reverberate to the present day. In case studies ranging from the Far East to the American Southwest, the authors of Last Hunters-First Farmers provide a global perspective on contemporary research into the origins of agriculture. Downplaying more traditional explanations of the turn to agriculture, such as the influence of marginal environments and population pressures, the authors emphasize the importance of the resource-rich areas in which agriculture began, the complex social organizations already in place, the role of sedentism, and the advent of economic intensification and competition.