The Neolithic Revolution Was A Time Of Change

Reaction Paper #1

The Neolithic Revolution was a time of change. It was the idea of bringing agriculture late in 10,000 BC after the end of the Ice Age. It was the beginning of The Fertile Crescent and based settlement, were the first tribe known as “Abu Hureyra” had the ability to grow their own food. In essence, they began to grow grasses for the cultivation of grains such as: wheat, barley, rice, lentils, and peas. They also began the raise of livestock such as sheep, and goats. The Fertile Crescent was the beginning of a huge transition that began spreading westward. Furthermore, many farmers began to adapt to the same lifestyle as hunters, gatherers, and wanderers because they felt like the settled life fed more people. The Fertile
Crescent brought a variety of tools. For example, they had digging sticks to break up soil and axes. The more that people started to adapt to this lifestyle the more that settled down and stayed in one place longer. This had an increase in their population which resulted to the built of their own community, government, and army. One the other hand, the Americas isolated themselves from the rest of the world because they felt that they needed to raise their own crops. In addition, they developed the “backed blades” which led to the plow that was used to open up the soil, it increased the pace in which these farmers worked. Eventually, machinery’s became to be known resulting in more land and less workers. In addition, the settled life did cultivate more food for people but it was not as healthy as that of the gathers, and hunters.
According to Hillel, Dan. in “The Agricultural Transformation,” he states that people would eat grain and suitable crops rather than “rich and varied nutrition.”(page 2) On the other hand, people including children had a stable living and enough food to depend on. Hunters and gathers had more animals, which meant they're food can last a few days only if they were lucky enough to catch one. Although they're farming was difficult than the settled life, they lived a lot healthier because of the protein in the food they gathered. Moreover, when comparing and contrasting both the new and old world we can see that both modified the human diet in a negative way where the people did not receive the nutrients needed as well as positive where we have natural grown crops occurring causing a more stable food source. Both the old and new worlds had infectious disease but the only difference is that in the old world diseases were caused by rats or cockroaches. In todays world we have diseases such HIV ,AIDS, or
malaria. The Fertile Crescent was one of the biggest impacts that we faced, causing an influence to our social structure.
The old world became what is now referred to the new world. In todays world we have a variety of crops grown in thousands of farms with new irrigation methods. This new world has given many agricultural opportunity jobs just like in the old world with a greater increase in our population. We now have cotton that essentially was needed for clothes. Agriculture has now provided us with plenty of food and beverages. We have a number of sufficient food and water to depend on as well as any medical need. On the other hand, because of this change we have consequences that has affected our environment and the people living in it. For example, the pollution that we are surrounded by is causing lung affects, especially for the young ones. We also have a low quality in nutrition due to fast food places such as McDonalds. Nevertheless, the old world went from living in the rural area to transforming it into a city of new
opportunities. Overall, the huge transition that The Neolithic Revolution has brought us has changed the new world drastically. Thousands of years ago the “Abu Hureyra” tribe had no idea that planting grass was going to lead to an entire new world with a variety of food, beverages, jobs, clothing, and education to name a few. Throughout those years they also had the discovery of new tools such as the plow, this tool changed the way of farming because it made the job very easy and quicker than usual. According to Wessel, Thomas in “The Agricultural Foundations of Civilizations,” he stated that “the techniques of agriculture changed very slowly..” We know that many people adapted this to this idea but we also know that they all used different techniques to achieve this agricultural way of life. Now, because of agriculture we have our way of life.