Big History

Threshold 7 · Agriculture

The Agricultural Revolution

People begin to farm, and farming makes villages, cities, states, writing, empires and inequality possible.

12,000 years ago About 12,000 years ago to 1500 CE 2 of 6 lessons ready
JAN FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JUL AUG SEP OCT NOV DEC Threshold 1: The Beginning, 1 January, 00:00:00 1 Threshold 2: Formation of Stars, 5 January 2 Threshold 3: Chemicals Cook Up, 8 January 3 Threshold 4: The Early Earth, 2 September 4 Threshold 5: Emergence of Life, 30 September 5 Threshold 6: Collective Learning, 31 December, 23:48:33 6 Threshold 7: The Agricultural Revolution, 31 December, 23:59:32 7 Threshold 8: Modernity Strikes, 31 December, 23:59:59 8 Threshold 7 31 December, 23:59:32
On the cosmic calendar this threshold begins on 31 December, 23:59:32.

For a quarter of a million years our species lived by foraging. Then, within a few thousand years and in several places independently, people began to plant and to herd. It was not an obvious improvement, and this chapter asks why they did it anyway.

Farming produced surplus, surplus produced cities, and cities produced everything that follows: hierarchy, writing, states, epidemics and trade networks that eventually stretched from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean. The Indus Valley civilisation, one of the earliest urban societies on Earth, sits at the centre of this chapter.

The agrarian era lasted ten thousand years and set the pattern of human life for most of recorded history. It ended only when a new source of energy was found.

Lessons

  1. 7.1
    Why farm?

    Climate, population and the Holocene: why farming began where and when it did.

    Draft
  2. 7.2
    Domestication

    How wheat, rice, cattle and dogs were remade by people, and people by them.

    Planned
  3. 7.3
    Villages to cities

    Surplus, hierarchy, writing and the first states.

    Draft
  4. 7.4
    The Indus Valley civilisation

    Cities, water engineering and a script still unread.

    Planned
  5. 7.5
    The price of farming

    Disease, inequality and shorter lives: what agriculture cost.

    Planned
  6. 7.6
    Empires and exchange

    Agrarian empires, the Silk Road and the Indian Ocean world.

    Planned

Disciplines