Neolithic Revolution

The Neolithic Revolution is the term for the first agricultural revolution, describing the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture, as first adopted by various independent prehistoric human societies, in various locations. The term refers to both the general time period over which these initial developments took place and the subsequent changes to Neolithic human societies which either resulted from, or are associated with, the adoption of early farming techniques and crop cultivation. The first agricultural revolution spurred major social change, including a high population density, the organization of an hierarchical society, the specialization in non-agricultural crafts, a standing army, barter and trade, and the expansion of man's "control" over nature.

The hunter-gatherer way of life was being replaced with the domestication of crops and animals, which enabled people to live more sedentary lives (which led to the building of villages, creating new social, cultural, economic, and political concepts, as mentioned above). Agriculture in this era was subsistence agriculture, which means people were farming for their own diet (not for sale/profit) and the farmers practiced crop rotation (letting the fields lay in fallow between planting seasons).

In the refinement of archaeological and historical dating systems, as a time period the Neolithic Revolution broadly defines the transition from the late Upper Palaeolithic to the succeeding Neolithic ages; this demarcation is particularly applied to cultures in the Old World, and less frequently to others.

The societal changes most often associated with the Neolithic Revolution include an increased tendency to live in permanent or semi-permanent settlements, a corresponding reduction in nomadic lifestyles, the concept of land ownership, modifications to the natural environment, the ability to sustain higher population densities, an increased reliance on vegetable and cereal foods in the total diet, alterations to social hierarchies, nascent "trading economies" using surplus production from increasing crop yields, and the development of new technologies. The relationship of these characteristics to the onset of agriculture, to each other, their sequence and even whether some of these changes are supported by the available evidence remains the subject of much academic debate, and seems to vary from place to place.