evelopment of Agriculture

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  1. NEW CHALLENGES FOR HUMANITY

The development of agricultural about 12,000 years ago changed the way humans lived.

They switched from nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyles to permanent settlements and

farming. Humans organized to face the new conditions they found in places they arrived:

other climates, new predators, even more primitive humans. This new period of time

received the name of "Neolithic".

FARMING REVOLUTION

Around the world people changed their way of life about 10,000 years ago, adopting some

form of agriculture. It's thought that climatic changes at the end of the last ice age brought

seasonal conditions that favored plants to grow naturally. It also influenced some groups to

observe that plants have a cycle: they are born, grow and bear fruit. Traditional huntergatherer lifestyles, followed by humans since their evolution, were swept aside in favor

of permanent settlements and a reliable food supply.

  1. MAIN CENTERS OF DEVELOPMENT

Regarding the intensive development of the agriculture, there were four main centers:

a) The Fertile Crescent, of the

Mediterranean (today countries of

Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Syria, and

Turkey), 10.000 years ago.

b) Northwest China, 7000 years ago.

c) Mesoamerica (Central and southern

Mexico and adjacent areas of Central

America), 5000 years ago.

d) Andean America (today Ecuador and

Peru), 4000 years ago

  1. AGRICULTURE IN ANDEAN AMERICA

Indigenous peoples in America were

diverse. The communities practice

agriculture in a period call "Formative".

In this period, people live in villages,

discover and develop ceramics, make

textiles (including cotton), improve

stone tools and, some, discover the

metallurgy of copper and gold.

  1. COMMON PRODUCTS

✓ One of the first plants to be cultivated in what

now are the United States, Mexico and the

Pacific coast of South America was the squash, a

kind of pumpkin (at least 10,000 years ago).

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Corn cultivation was spread throughout the

Americas, from the current Canada to Chile.

Some communities cultivated corn only

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✓ Yucca is also one of the oldest crops in the

humid tropical zones of the Caribbean and the

Amazon basin.

✓ Also, beans were cultivated in Mesoamerica,

the Caribbean and South America

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