The Agricultural Revolution

Evolution is defined as, “the process by which different kinds of living organisms are thought to have developed and diversified from earlier forms during the history of the earth.” As a human race we are always evolving. It was no different thousands of years ago as humans knew that in order to survive, they would have to adjust their lifestyles. Humans changed from a nomadic existence of hunters and gathers to a sedentary existence in agricultural villages in order to evolve and ultimately survive, but it had both its positives and negatives.
One reason a transition to agricultural life was vital was because of a decline in the availability of wild foods. The reason hunter-gatherers found so much success in their nomadic lifestyle was because …show more content…
First, animals were now being domesticated instead of only being used for food. For example, when Polynesians migrated, they brought chickens with them, not as food, but as farm animals. Second, was technologies for collecting, processing, and storing wild foods. The transition from hunter-gathers to agricultural lifestyles brought forth some of the most useful and advanced technologies to the date. These inventions included sickles of flint blades cemented into wooden or bone handles for harvesting wild grains; baskets to carry the grains home from where they picked them, mortars and pestles to remove husks; and the technique of roasting grains so that they could be stored without sprouting. These technological advancements helped hunter-gatherers ease into the new “agricultural revolution”. Third, was a great increase in human population. A gradual rise in population densities impelled people to obtain more food. With more food ultimately came more people, so a positive outcome of the “agricultural revolution” was a higher human population. Lastly and pretty rhetorical, is the demise of hunter-gathers. Of course there were still hunter-gathers even after the “agricultural revolution”, but with the number of farmers and those in favor of agriculture highly outnumbering hunter-gathers, it was easy for them to run these hunter-gathers out of their land. As a result, hunter-gathers were given …show more content…
First, was the increasing warfare that came with this urbanization. With the urbanization came much more conflicts with neighboring city-states. The fighting was frequent and was overly destructive because the kings and soldiers believed that they were upholding the honor of their gods, and at the time, when cities were sacred, conflicts between them mean holy war or fights to the finish. Lewis Mumford regarded this “early union of power, religion, and continuous warfare as a permanent curse of urban life.” Another negative of urbanization was the growing social inequality. The first Sumerian cities fostered division of labor into occupational categories. At the top were the priests and kings, followed by a broad middle class, and finished off with slaves at the bottom of the economic hierarchy. Lastly, was the oppression of women. The introduction of urbanization and social classes may have provided the entering wedge for the subordination of women. Women in Sumer had basic rights such as being able to own property and engage in business, but were clearly limited by their husbands. Even powerful women were often only pawns. It was clear that women had more power in family groups than they did in the city-states that replaced