Why Did Humanity Transition to Agriculture?
Why did our distant ancestors make the transition from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to one of agriculture? Over the millennia, as waves of humans migrated out of Africa and gradually spread around the world, depletion of local resources, especially from overhunting, was easily resolved: move. The solution was often to simply walk a few miles over to the next valley or along a shore or down a river, until they arrived in a new biosphere not yet occupied by other humans.
However, by the end of the Ice Age, circa 11,500 years ago, humans had already moved into and occupied nearly the entire world. Other than some Pacific and Indian Ocean islands, nearly every habitable zone on earth, from the Arctic Circle in the north all the way down to the southern tip of South America, was already inhabited. That ended the option of simply moving over to the next valley when resources in one’s own valley ran low. As seen below, new solutions – ones that set the stage for the rise of civilization – had to be found.
