Neolithic Agricultural Revolution

Neolithic Agricultural Revolution The Neolithic Agricultural Revolution is what we call the transition from nomadic life to settled farm life. It had a big impact on early people and their way of life and led to the rise of cities, which in turn lead to the development of civilization. Before the Neolithic Period was the Paleolithic Period. During the Paleolithic Period, people were nomads. They hunted and gathered food from the area they were currently living in. Therefore, once the food supply came to an end, they moved to another area. People during those times traveled in small groups so they wouldn't have too many people to feed and be responsible for. They also had simple tools and believed in animism. The Neolithic Period, or New Stone Age, began at about 10,000BC. The Neolithic Agricultural Revolution was a turning point in history. People developed agriculture, or farming. To farm, they settled down in one area and became farmers instead of hunters and gatherers. With the development of agriculture, people started to throughly change the way they lived. The calender and other technologies were created along with new skills and tool. People also domesticated animals such as dogs, chicken, cattle, pigs, and sheep, depending on where they lived. Early civilizations developed near major rivers. The rivers provided water and transportation. Rivers also provided farming lands with tiny bits of rock and dirt from river bottoms called silt. Silt would renew the soil and keep it fertile every time a flood occurred. Because of such fertile soil, farmers produced surpluses of food. The large quantities of food fed more people, causing a population increase. As the population increased, farming villages grew into cities. People from one village or city would mingle with another and ideas, culture or technology would spread resulting in cultural diffision. Civilization was just beginning. In cities, almost everything became more complex. Civilization was