For many thousands of years, we were all hunters and gatherers. As our Human “toolkits” expanded, so did our geographic range. Human population expanded so rapidly, in fact, that social scientists now believe that mass extinctions of large animals sometimes followed the arrival of hunter/ gatherers into a new region, as humans became better hunters. As animals became less plentiful in the Near East, between 12,000 and 9,000 years ago, some hunter/gatherers began to experiment with the domestication of plants. Others experimented with domestication of animals. 

Over time, these new “farmers” stayed put to guard and tend their crops. As they became better farmers, it became possible to subsist on the land. Tribes became self-sufficient, subsistence farm families. Other Neolithic farmers became nomadic herders (pastoralists). The term Neolithic Revolution is given to the time in human history when farming and the domestication of animals were “invented.” The domestications of plants and animals were revolutionary because it changed human experience forever. These two developments led to: 

• Settled life 

• Land ownership 

• Housing and pottery and, thus, storage of goods 

• Increased population 

• Use of animal power for work and transport 

•The triad of farming, pastoral nomadism, and hunting/ gathering 

•The possibility of epidemic diseases (a product of civilization) resulting from the domestication of animals and settled life

Ultimately, people in those parts of the world who possessed farming and large domesticated animals developed large populations and civilizations. Where the farming environment held up, the world’s most powerful civilizations emerged. It is interesting that gender roles in Neolithic times were more equal than in the succeeding thousands of years.