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Essay The Mark of Agriculture in Neolithic Revolution

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There have been several major revolutions throughout human history. V. Gordon Childe explains them as; The Neolithic Revolution, The Urban Revolution and The Industrial Revolution. (Harris 1994) These revolutions mark monumental periods in human history. Each thought to be a tremendous benefit to the survival of humankind. However, when all of the evidence is taken into account, especially regarding the Neolithic revolution, it would appear that there is significant detriment to the survival of the human race. The Neolithic, the first of the revolutions, which is marked by the advent of agriculture, may in fact be the pivotal point of the human health decline. Before agriculture, human populations relied heavily on the foods that they …show more content…

Because the hunter-gatherer diet was so varied it was also dense in vitamins and minerals, therefore, making it less likely for them to have the nutritional deficiencies and other diseases, related to food consumption or the lack thereof. Hunter—gatherers also did not have to work as hard for their food. Because of the division of labor among hunter gatherers women did most of the gathering. They would spend only a few hours a day gathering the amount of food necessary to feed their family and many times they had enough to share among others in their band. Men generally did the hunting and because game can be harder to locate than the foods that are immobile. At times men would leave to hunt for several days at a time with no guarantee that they would come back with a kill. This is why they did not always have meat in their diets; though when they had meat they typically had abundance for a very short period of time. (Cochran and Harpending 2009, Morris 2008, Robinson 2013) Agriculture first took hold in the Middle East where they began by cultivating wheat. From there agriculture spread to the surrounding areas and into Asia Minor. Each geographical region growing the grain most suited for their area. This led to a dependence of the staple grain for the area because these grains could be grown in abundance and a surplus kept, human populations relied heavily on that single crop for sustenance. The reliance of a single food source led

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