A Revolution that Fed all

The agricultural revolution is one of the biggest revolutions of mankind. If this revolution did not happen mankind would have never existed. There are many causes that led up to this revolution, as well as many effects that happened after the revolution, good and bad! Some causes would be people needing more food, and hard labor work.

According to Harari, the Agricultural revolution started about 10,000 years ago(pg.77). Sapiens began to put more time and effort into using animals in different types of ways, and started using certain plant species. Sapiens worked day and night to try and provide more food for themselves and others.”It was a revolution in the way humans lived--The Agricultural Revolution.”(Pg.77). So before the revolution humans were all about hunting and gathering. Humans would depend on a lifestyle where collecting plants and hunting wild animals was what life was all about. One big cause of the revolution was there was not enough food people could not survive long because they would be starving or they would die trying to hunt animals.

There were alot of effects of the revolution but there were a couple that really had big impacts. One was because of people started settling down and living in ‘forever homes’ the population of the world started to increase rapidly. With all these people who settled down they decided to start experimenting with plants and watch how they grow and why they grow. This cause led to the domestication of plants and animals. Animals were domesticated for there meat at first then later on sheep came into view and that brought wool. Then sapiens that learned how to grow crops would start a farm and would provide food to their village or town. Eventually in the future they would use animals to help them prepare the ground for the crops with horses. The revolution involved far more than the adoption of a limited set of food-producing techniques. During the next millennia it would transform the small and mobile groups of hunter and gathers that dominated human prehistory into built-up villages and towns. These societies modified their natural environment by means of specialized food-crop cultivation, with activities such as irrigation (watering their crops) and deforestation(cutting down trees and using the resources) which allowed the production of a lot more food. Other developments found very widely are the domestication of animals, pottery, polished stone tools, and rectangular houses. Meanwhile when all this was happening the hunter and gatherers needed to realize that they needed to use there brain and remember what type of food can be eaten and food that can kill them. As days, months, and years went on more and more societies were getting very complexed. “As the number of people grew, so did the amount of information required to coordinate their affairs.”(Pg.122)

So the impact of this revolution was, Today you can walk into your local grocery store and fill your shopping cart with a huge amount of different types of fresh foods. Then, with little to no effort you could hope to the next aisle and grab cereal and grab whichever one you would want out of the 10 choices, then finally before your done shopping you head to the bread aisle, where you grab a couple of loaves of bread for your family for dinner. What you probably don't realize is that all of these items you pick up from the store, could not be a reality if it were not for the Agricultural Revolution that took place hundreds of years ago. To rap this up if it was not for the Agricultural Revolution would any of us really be here? Or would humans as we know it be extinct.

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