Sapiens: a brief History of Humankind

Part Two
The Agricultural Revolution
11.
 A wall painting from an Egyptian grave, dated to about 3,500 years ago, depicting typical agricultural
scenes
.

---

5
History’s Biggest Fraud
FOR 2.5 MILLION YEARS HUMANS FED themselves by gathering plants and
hunting animals that lived and bred without their intervention. 
Homo erectus
,
Homo ergaster
and the Neanderthals plucked wild gs and hunted wild sheep
without deciding where g trees would take root, in which meadow a herd of
sheep should graze, or which billy goat would inseminate which nanny goat.
Homo sapiens
spread from East Africa to the Middle East, to Europe and Asia, and
nally to Australia and America – but everywhere they went, Sapiens too
continued to live by gathering wild plants and hunting wild animals. Why do
anything else when your lifestyle feeds you amply and supports a rich world of
social structures, religious beliefs and political dynamics?
All this changed about 10,000 years ago, when Sapiens began to devote almost
all their time and e ort to manipulating the lives of a few animal and plant
species. From sunrise to sunset humans sowed seeds, watered plants, plucked
weeds from the ground and led sheep to prime pastures. This work, they thought,
would provide them with more fruit, grain and meat. It was a revolution in the
way humans lived – the Agricultural Revolution.
The transition to agriculture began around 9500–8500 
BC
in the hill country of
south-eastern Turkey, western Iran, and the Levant. It began slowly and in a
restricted geographical area. Wheat and goats were domesticated by
approximately 9000 
BC
; peas and lentils around 8000 
BC
; olive trees by 5000 
BC
;
horses by 4000 
BC
; and grapevines in 3500 
BC
. Some animals and plants, such as
camels and cashew nuts, were domesticated even later, but by 3500 
BC
the main
wave of domestication was over. Even today, with all our advanced technologies,
more than 90 per cent of the calories that feed humanity come from the handful of
plants that our ancestors domesticated between 9500 and 3500 
BC
– wheat, rice,
maize (called ‘corn’ in the US), potatoes, millet and barley. No noteworthy plant
or animal has been domesticated in the last 2,000 years. If our minds are those of
hunter-gatherers, our cuisine is that of ancient farmers.
Scholars once believed that agriculture spread from a single Middle Eastern
point of origin to the four corners of the world. Today, scholars agree that

---

agriculture sprang up in other parts of the world not by the action of Middle
Eastern farmers exporting their revolution but entirely independently. People in
Central America domesticated maize and beans without knowing anything about
wheat and pea cultivation in the Middle East. South Americans learned how to
raise potatoes and llamas, unaware of what was going on in either Mexico or the
Levant. Chinas rst revolutionaries domesticated rice, millet and pigs. North
America’s first gardeners were those who got tired of combing the undergrowth for
edible gourds and decided to cultivate pumpkins. New Guineans tamed sugar cane
and bananas, while the rst West African farmers made African millet, African
rice, sorghum and wheat conform to their needs. From these initial focal points,
agriculture spread far and wide. By the rst century 
AD
the vast majority of people
throughout most of the world were agriculturists.
Why did agricultural revolutions erupt in the Middle East, China and Central
America but not in Australia, Alaska or South Africa? The reason is simple: most
species of plants and animals can’t be domesticated. Sapiens could dig up delicious
tru es and hunt down woolly mammoths, but domesticating either species was
out of the question. The fungi were far too elusive, the giant beasts too ferocious.
Of the thousands of species that our ancestors hunted and gathered, only a few
were suitable candidates for farming and herding. Those few species lived in
particular places, and those are the places where agricultural revolutions occurred.
Scholars once proclaimed that the agricultural revolution was a great leap forward
for humanity. They told a tale of progress fuelled by human brain power.
Evolution gradually produced ever more intelligent people. Eventually, people
were so smart that they were able to decipher nature’s secrets, enabling them to
tame sheep and cultivate wheat. As soon as this happened, they cheerfully
abandoned the gruelling, dangerous, and often spartan life of hunter-gatherers,
settling down to enjoy the pleasant, satiated life of farmers.

---