The first farmers

The first farmers: from 8000 BC

The first farming must have started by accident, may be from weeding around a plant or may be perhaps by unintentional watering of an area which were fertile for plantations and after observing the developments after these unintentional watering in those areas, cultivation of farming started.  It is from these that farming started catching on with earlier mankind.  From penning in animals, main purpose is to eat them, to kill them when needed, it was a small step to keeping them until their offspring are born.

In any one place the process was a gradual but it caught on with many civilizations around the world.  Cultivated crops or domesticated animals, at first formed 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, almost similar but with not so noticeable difference.  But in the Middle East, in America, in China and Southeast Asia, the change did occur. 

The earliest place known to have lived mainly from the cultivation of crops started spreading around the world from Jerico.  By around 8000 BC this community started occupying a naturally well-watered region, is growing selected forms of wheat, soon to be followed by barley.  These people are still hunters but had stopped being the gatherers for foods. Their source of meat is wild gazelle, goat, boar and cattle. 

Sheep and goats, cattle and pigs: 7000-9000 BC

First animals known to have been domesticated as a source of food are sheep in the Middle East. The high proportion of bones of one-year-old sheep discarded in a settlement at Shanidar was considered as a proof of this domestication and a source of food, in what is now northern Iraq. It was soon followed by goats and these two become the standard animals of the nomadic pastoralists – tribes and they moved along with their flocks all the year, looking for fresh grass for their flocks. 

Cattle and pigs are associated more with settled communities around the world and it is believed that they were domesticated slightly later but these could not have been long after 8000 BC. The ox must have been first to be bred by humans in western Asia. The pig is probably first domesticated in China. 
 

Of the basic farm animals, cattle represent the most significant development in village life.   It was around that time that mankind realized that cattle not only provide food to eat but also provide milk in plentiful that is more than their off springs can consume or require and their strength provided an unprecedented addition to man’s endeavor to do things.

Pre historic cultures - research 1

During the prehistoric era, cannibalism amongst the prehistoric tribes existed, there is also archeological evidence of cannibalism among some of the prehistoric communities - so, they most probably knew about our inner organs and also knew where lean tissue or fat predominates in the human body. Most likely, they believed that their lives were determined by spirits. Aboriginal peoples around the world today often correlate illness with losing one's soul.  Also illness and disease were considered punishment from Gods.

Prehistoric medicines refers to those medicines that were used to heal before the mankind were able to read and write.  It covers vast period and also varies according to regions and cultures across the world.  Only a calculated guestimates could be made by Anthropologists, those people who study the history of humanity of bygone era, these guestimates were based studying human remains and artifacts which have survived disintegrating over the centuries through some source of preservation used at that times.

Prehistoric people believed in a combination of natural and supernatural causes for the treatment for conditions and disease.  In those era, the placebo effect of the treatment and the side effects did not exist or were not known or understood.  There may have been some trial and error before they could arrive at an effective treatment.  Prehistoric people never had to think about the future since the mentality at that period was to survive day to day and hence the need to take into other factors must not have crossed their mind like in today like lifestyle, family history, and the placebo effect.

There are lots evidences from their burial practices which made the modern man think that they knew something about bone structure solely because bones have been found that were stripped of the flesh, bleached and piled according to what part of the body they came from.

The prehistoric period overlapped with some other historical periods. During the height of the ancient Egyptian civilization, most of Europe was in the New Stone Age. The Minoan civilization flourished at that time like the Bronze Age in other places, During the Greek and early Roman periods Britain was in the Iron Age, thus you can see that not all the places in the world was moving at the same pace and hence the current scenario where some countries are way ahead of others and called as industrialized nations and some countries are developing whereas others are far behind in developments.