No one knows for certain when and where human communities first learned to cultivate the ground and plant crops. Women probably took the important first steps. They were the ones who picked seeds and berries while the men hunted. And women may have known for a very long time how to pull out useless plants to make more room for those that produced good seeds or fruits. But as long as bands of humans moved to and fro across miles of country, always looking for the best hunting grounds, the women could do only a little to encourage the growth of edible berries, seed grasses, or roots.

Grain Farming and Herding

Not long before 7000 B.C.E., however, a basic change began to affect the part of the world now called the Middle East. We can tell well enough what came out of the change: small, simple villages of farmers. But no one knows just how or exactly where the change occurred.

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The most favorable ground for the invention of agriculture lay on the western side of the numerous hills and mountains that lie east of the Mediterranean Sea but to the west of what is now the central desert region of Iran. In this region, hillsides facing westerly winds caught enough rain to support a fairly heavy growth of trees. The plains were usually too dry for trees and could only support grasses, with occasional clumps of trees along watercourses or where underground water came near the surface. Toward the south, the land became drier and shaded off into harsh desert in southern Iraq and northern Arabia.

As to how farming was invented, we have to guess. The real breakthrough was the discovery of how to make seed-bearing grassesÑancestors of our wheat and barleyÑgrow in places where they did not grow naturally. By preparing fields in forested land, where grasses did not ordinarily grow at all, people could plant suitable kinds of seeds and be sure that only food crops would grow. In such locations natural competitors (weeds) could not mix with and partly crowd out the seed-bearing wheat and barley, because weed seeds could not easily pass through the forest barrier and establish themselves on the artificially cleared land.

The trick, then, was to be able to create at will special environments where useful plants could thrive. Men did this by cutting a ring of bark around trees of the forest. Slashing the bark killed the trees and opened the forest floor to sunlight. In such a specially prepared place, wheat and barley could grow very well indeed.

But before agriculture could flourish, still another change had to take place. When shaken by the wind or by some passing animal, wild wheat and barley scattered their ripe seeds on the ground. This made harvesting difficult. But human action soon selected strains with tougher stems, so that seed no longer shook out of the ripened ears, even when the stalks were grasped by human hands and cut with a sickle. After all, only those seeds that stayed in the ear could be carried home by the farmers, and only seeds that had been safely harvested could be planted the next year. Rapid selection therefore took place in favor of varieties that suited human needs.

After forest clearings had been cultivated for two or three years, the cultivators found it helpful to burn the dead tree trunks and scatter the ashes over the soil. This fertilized the ground for one or two more crops. But after five or six years, such fields usually became choked with thistles and other weeds (whose seeds had come in on the wind), so that the soil was no longer worth cultivating. Instead, the early farmers killed the trees somewhere else in the forest and started the cycle of slash-and-burn cultivation all over again. Their old fields, abandoned, soon filled with trees again.

Tools of the New Stone Age

The soft soil of the forest floor scarcely needed to be dug. A pointed stick to stir up the leaf mold and make sure the seeds were in contact with moist ground beneath was all that was necessary to make the seeds grow. Special sickles for cutting

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grain stalks had already been invented to aid in harvesting wild-growing grain. None of these implements required any fundamental change in tool types.

But cutting the bark around tree trunks was a different matter. An ax sharp enough to bite through into the wood, and tough enough not to shatter on impact against the tree trunk, demanded a different kind of stone from that used in making hunting tools. Arrowheads, knives, and spears could be made of brittle stone, for they were designed to cut soft animal tissues. They needed to be sharp, and even prehumans had discovered how to shatter a stone in such a way as to produce suitable cutting edges. But the techniques for shaping brittle stone would not do for an ax. Tough, unchippable kinds of stones were needed to withstand the impact against a tree trunk. The problem was solved by grinding and polishing basalt and similar varieties of hard, dense stone.

Tools produced by this method look very different from those made by chipping brittle pieces of flint. Slow, patient work of grinding and polishing the natural surfaces of the stone produced smooth, keen cutting edges. Obviously, this took much longer than chipping tools into shape; but a well-made stone ax might last a lifetime and could be resharpened over and over again in exactly the same way that it had been made in the first place. Such axes were quite efficient. Modern experiments have shown that, when put onto a proper handle, ancient stone axes can cut down a tree almost as fast as a modern steel-bladed ax.

Needless to say, people did not cease to be hunters when they discovered how to make little fields in the forests and plant grain in them. Moreover, in places far away from the forest slopes of the Middle East, life went on quite unchanged by the fact that a few human communities had made this discovery. All the same, the balance of nature was seriously upset, for as food from the forest grainfields became more and more abundant, larger numbers of human beings could survive. Soon there were far too many hunters, fed partly by grain from the new fields. Wild game animals within range of the farming communities were nearly exterminated.

The Domestication of Animals

This imbalance presented hunters with a great crisis. Some of them met it by domesticating a few of the kinds of animals they had been accustomed to chase and kill. At first these animals were only used for meat. But by or before 4000 B.C.E., some communities in and around the Middle East had worked out other ways to exploit their flocks and herds. In particular, animal milk became an important new food; animal hair and wool was sheared and made into cloth; and animal strength was harnessed to carry and pull heavy loads. On the grasslands north of the Black Sea, horse breeders may have learned to ride, but for a long time no one dared to drop the reins in order to shoot with a bow, so the military significance of riding horseback was delayed for more than two millennia.

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Nonetheless, these new ways of using domestic animals gave farm communities valuable new resources. Milk and milk products (cheese, butter, yogurt) added fat and protein to a mainly cereal diet, and woolen cloth could be tailored to fit local climates as tanned animal skinsÑthe older sort of clothesÑcould not be.

Animals selected for their readiness to submit to human exploitation quickly diverged from their wild ancestors. Their skeletons changed, and so experts can usually tell whether a particular pile of bones scattered around some ancient dwelling place came from wild or domesticated stock.

The fact is that as humans became dependent on food coming from domesticated plants and animals, domesticated plants and animals also became dependent on human beings. Wheat and barley that did not scatter its seeds naturally on the ground could not grow unless planted by hand. Domesticated animals, lacking the fierceness of their wild relatives, could not survive without human protection.

Humans, of course, became even more immediately dependent on their crops and herds. They paid another price in the form of less free time than hunters and gatherers enjoyed; and settling down in one place had the effect of intensifying exposure to various infectious diseases.

All the same, when the new kinds of plants and animals had come into existence and when men and women had learned how to manage them skillfully, the scene was set for comparatively rapid expansion of a radically new style of human living. Wherever suitable broad-leaved forests could be found, it was easy to carve out the fields upon which these little farming communities depended. Wherever grasses or leafy plants grew wild, people could drive their flocks and herds to pasture. Northern cold and desert dryness set limits to this kind of life, but within the wide zone that lay between these extremes, the whole world lay open to the first Neolithic farmers and herders.

As grainfields became more and more important, bands of people settled down to live in one spot for several years at a time. A prolonged stay made it worthwhile to build solid houses, often of mud or mud-brick, perhaps with some kind of thatched roof. It was also possible to furnish the house with breakables, such as pottery; and since grain had to be stored in a dry place to prevent premature sprouting, large storage pots became important.

From the time pottery first appeared, different communities shaped and decorated pots and other objects in different ways. And since baked clay lasts a long time, and styles of decoration changed with time as well as with place, pottery provides the experts with their principal evidence of cultural traditions and connections between archaeological sites.

Three Major Problems of the Early Farmers

The earliest farmers probably led peaceful lives, but not for long. While some human communities learned how to farm, others lived in drier, grassy areas where slash-and-burn cultivation would not work. But such communities could domesticate animals and pasture them on the wide grasslands that lay both north and south of the forested zones of the Middle East. Communities that specialized as shepherds and herders remained footloose, moving from place to place in search of pasture. The men in such communities kept much of the spirit and organization of the early hunting bands, for their daily task was to defend their animals against wild beasts and against other men. Warlike habits and the discipline of cooperation in combat naturally arose from such daily experience. . . .

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Accurate Measurement of Time

Another critical problem for early farmers was deciding when to plant. In the Middle East, rains fall only in the winter months. Grain must be planted in the fall and ripens in early summer after the drought sets in. If, however, the seed grain is planted too soon, a chance shower might cause the seed to sprout, only to wither in the sun's pitiless rays. If, on the other hand, the seed grain is planted too late, the plants might not ripen fully before summer drought sets in again.

Such errors were disastrous; how could they be avoided? The answer was to watch the moon and count the months marked out by the moon's phases. But, of course, the waxing and waning of the moon does not exactly fit into the solar year, which determines the seasons. Every so often, communities that counted by the moon had to put an extra month in their calendar to adjust to the track of the sun.

Exactly how to do this in order to keep an accurate calendar was never solved satisfactorily by the early farmers. But, compared to what hunters had to know about time, the first farmers had a far greater need for accurate time keeping, and they made great advances. In the hunter's life, one day was much like the other. Whether it was sunny or rainy, hot or cold, made small difference in what had to be done. The farmer, on the other hand, had to look forward and learn to count and calculate. How much grain could a family afford to eat, and how much should be set aside for planting? Farmers had to ration consumption so as to make the grain last until the new harvest. The year, instead of the day, became the fundamental unit of human time, and the annual measurement of time be came vital.

Very likely certain individuals in the early farming communities became ritual expertsÑ the earliest priestsÑand decided under which

Page 13 moon to plant the grain. But we have no certain information about this. We do know that the farmers' concern about planting and harvesting crops found expression in religion. Sun and moon, particularly the latter, were worshipped as gods or spirits with power over fertility. The earth, too, was thought of as a great mother, giving birth to the food people needed.

The parallel between the patterns of human life and plant life impressed itself on early farmers' minds. If seed, when planted, sprang again life, only to die and then be planted once again, what of humans? If buried in a grave, would a person not rise again? Since dead relatives and friends often appeared in dreams, it seemed logical to answer yes. After death a person's lot must be a shadowy life, perhaps in a dark underworld. Old Stone Age hunters, too, probably believed in life after death and may have conceived of the earth as a mother. Differences, therefore, were more of emphasis than of kind.

Shortage of Suitable Land

The third great practical problem the early farmers confronted was a growing shortage of suitable forest land. As the population grew, virgin timber became scarcer and scarcer. It became necessary after a while to use abandoned fields over again, and at shorter and shorter intervals. This meant less abundant crops, since the soil was less fertile. It also became increasingly difficult to keep weeds under control: The closer together fields got to be, the more easily could weed seeds pass from one open sun-soaked patch of ground to another. Less-fertile soils and weed-choked fields meant less food for the same effort. Each family there fore had to cultivate more land, but this only made the problem worse.

Not very long before 3000 B.C.E., a brilliant solution to the problem of land shortage was discoveredÑthe invention of the plow. Probably it was not in the forested regions but in more open land along river banks that plows were invented. After all, the first fields were full of stumps. How could a plow do much good in such a place? But when men began to use animal strength to drag a spade or hoe through the ground, new possibilities opened up. Plowing could keep down the weeds. This, indeed, was its most important function. Plowing could also allow a single family to cultivate a far greater area than was possible with digging sticks. Finally, plowing allowed farmers to keep the same fields under cultivation indefinitely, for they soon discovered that a field left fallow (that is, unseeded) and plowed once or twice during the growing seasonÑto kill the weeds before they could go to seedÑwould yield a satisfactory harvest next year. A simple rotation between fallowing one year and planting the next thus developed. And a single family, with a suitable plow and team of oxen or donkeys, could keep enough land in tillage to feed themselves and have something left overÑon most soils and in most seasons.

The invention of the plow was fundamental to all subsequent Middle Eastern, Indian, and European civilizations. The plow was unknown in the Americas and never became as important in China as in western Eurasia. It brought animal husbandry (care and breeding) and grain farming together in a new way. It made men in stead of women the main cultivators, for men followed their beasts into the fields and drove the plow, whereas before the invention of the plow women had probably done most of the work in the fields.

The plow also created the sort of field we know today. When the same ground was kept in cultivation, after a few years stumps rotted away, and the plow soon evened off the small hummocks that nature creates in any forest floor. Such fields could then become the smooth, open-land surfaces, one adjacent to the next, of ten laid out in a more or less regular geometric pattern that we think of when we use the word "field."

Finally, the plow enabled grain farmers to settle down permanently. Once plowed fields had been laid out and brought into cultivation, there was no reason to move on. Permanent village sites, fixed patterns of ownership of particular fields, and a structure of village life that has lasted to the present day in Europe and western Asia thus came into existence. At the same time, the possibility of empire dawned. Farmers who could not afford to move away could be taxed; and taxes could support courts, rulers, armies, and cities. Civilization, in short, became a possibility. . . .