Neanderthals, Bandits and Farmers
Subtitle: How Agriculture Really Began (Darwinism Today series)
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: October 11, 1999
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 64
ISBN-13: 9780300080247
Subjects: Agricultural History; Prehistoric Archaeology; Social Science; History - General History; Sociology; Agriculture - General; Ancient - General; History / Ancient / General; Anthropology - General; Agriculture; Neolithic period; Origin
First sentence: Tradition has it that agriculture began in the Middle East around 10,000 years ago and so created the 'Neolithic Revolution' with farming itself accompanied by the first traces of cities, and soon, great leaps in the variety and subtlety of stone tools.
Description: "Tradition has it that agriculture began in the Middle East around 10,000 years ago and that once people realized the advantages of farming, it led rapidly to the Neolithic Revolution and the end of the hunting-gathering lifestyle. In this book Colin Tudge argues that agriculture in some form was in the repertoire of our ancestors for thousands of years before the Neolithic farming revolution.

The revolution was not the beginning of agriculture but the beginning of agriculture on a large scale, in one place, with refined tools. Tudge offers a persuasive hypothesis about a puzzling epoch, along the way providing new insights into the Pleistocene overkill, the demise of the Neanderthals, the location of the biblical Eden, and much more."--BOOK JACKET.