The first farmers from
8001 BC
From watering the
plants in a dry spell and from weeding around a plant, it is a small step in
collecting its seeds and planting them in a protected spot where they will have
better than average chances of growing.
From keeping animals
in cages, to kill them when needed was a small step in keeping them until their
offspring are born.
The process of
cultivating crops and domesticating animals was a slow process formed at first
only a small part of a community’s diet, most of it coming still from hunting
and gathering. In each place where the
change happened, its pattern is no different.
The earliest place
known to have lived mainly from the cultivation of crops is Jericho. By around
8000 BC this community, who were occupying a naturally well-watered region,
were into growing selected forms of wheat (emmer and einkorn are the two
varieties), which was soon to be followed by barley. Though no longer gatherers
like before, these people turned into hunters. Their source of meat was wild
gazelle, cattle, goat and boars.
Jericho is also known as the first town, that too it was no accident, with a population of 2000 or more. A pioneering agricultural community, surrounded by various other tribes dependent mostly on gathering food, offers easy pickings which then needed vigorous protection. Jericho had protective walls and a tower.
Sheep and goats, cattle and pigs: 9000-7000 BC
Jericho is also known as the first town, that too it was no accident, with a population of 2000 or more. A pioneering agricultural community, surrounded by various other tribes dependent mostly on gathering food, offers easy pickings which then needed vigorous protection. Jericho had protective walls and a tower.
Sheep and goats, cattle and pigs: 9000-7000 BC
The first animals known to have been domesticated as a source of food are sheep in the Middle East. This deducing was arrived at after see high proportion of bones of one-year-old sheep discarded in a settlement at Shanidar, in what is now called northern Iraq. Goats soon followed thereafter, and since then these two become the standard animals of the nomadic pastoralists, a tribes which moves all year long with their flocks, guided by the availability of fresh grass.
We also find that cattle and pigs are also associated more with settled communities, were domesticated slightly later - and it might have started probably not long after 7000 BC. The Ox may first have been bred by humans in western Asia. The pig must have been probably first domesticated in China.
