Last Hunters, First Farmers: New Perspectives on the Prehistoric Transition to Agriculture - Paperback

by T. Douglas Price (Editor), Anne Birgitte Gebauer (Editor)

Beginning about 10,000 years ago, the most remarkable phenomenon in the course of human prehistory was set in motion. At locations around the world, over a period of about 5,000 years, hunters became farmers. Far more than the domestication of plant and animal species was involved in this revolution, which was accompanied by massive changes in the structure and organization of the societies that adopted agriculture and by a totally new relationship with the environment. The implications of these changes in human activity and social organization reverberate down to the present day.
Exploring the pivotal questions of why and how hunting peoples became farmers, eleven distinguished archaeologists emphasize the importance of the resource-rich areas in which agriculture began, the complex social organizations already in place, the role of sedentism, and, in some locales, the advent of economic intensification and competition. Their essays in this volume provide a global perspective on contemporary research into the origins of agriculture.