Origin And Spread Of Domestication And Farming

They migrated not only with the language they spoke and their DNAs but also with their cows, bulls and buffaloes. With them went their dogs, chicken and goats. They carried with them the seeds of barley and rice and wheat. And the mice and shrews followed them. They spread the pottery and the figurines, the art and culture of India to Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Jordan and Israel and further west. This is the story of out-of-India migration of the farmers between 8000 BCE to 1500 BCE from Mehrgarh and the later Harappa Civilization located in the Indus-Sarasvati Valley of Northwest India, from Vindhya region, and the Ganga Valley in Central India and from the Brahmaputra Valley of Assam. Based on archaeological records of not only India, but also China, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Levant, and the genetic studies of man, animals and plants, both modern and ancient. A book for everyone interested in authentic evidence-based prehistory of India and her contributions to Asia, Europe and Africa during the Neolithic, Copper Age and Bronze Age. Appropriate citations and detailed bibliography, as well as a subject index, have been provided. The book lays to rest the speculative type of prehistory of India and the Aryan Invasion hypothesis.

Cereals; 4.

In this definitive volume, the authors review the origin and subsequent spread of the plants on which Old World food production was founded. Their account is based on the detailed consideration of the plant remains found at archaeological sites and accumulated knowledge about the present-day wild relatives of cultivated plants.

The origin of agriculture is one of the defining events of human history. Some 10,000 years ago bands of hunter-gatherers started to abandon their high-mobility lifestyles in favour of growing crops, and the creation of settled, sedentary communities. This settlement in favour of the agricultural lifestyle triggered the evolution of complex political and economic structures, and technological developments, and ultimately underpinned the rise of all the great civilisations of recent human history. Domestication of plants in the Old World reviews the origin and spread of cultivation in south-west Asia, Europe, and north-east Africa, from the very earliest beginnings. This new edition incorporates the most recent findings from molecular biology about the genetic relations between domesticated plants and their wild ancestors; it adds material on several new crop plants; and it incorporates extensive new archaeological data about the spread of agriculture within the region. The reference list has been completely updated, as have the list of archaeological sites and the site maps. From reviews of the second edition: 'This book is indeed a "mine of information". An enormous and diverse body of important results is digested and presented economically, in a form that should encourage other authors to mine it and apply the results to their own fields.' Nature 'This is an excellent book, suitable for libraries, reference shelves, and anyone who teaches or writes about plant domestication.' Journal of Ethnobiology 'Only a few years after the publication, in 1988, of Zohary and Hopf's textbook, the volume was already out of print.... One cannot be grateful enough to the authors that they seized the opportunity to update the book.... An indispensable reference work; a wealth of information is presented in a systematic way.... This already classic textbook has amply proven its value, and hardly needs further recommendation.' Helinium

"The transitions from hunting and gathering to agriculture had revolutionary consequences for human society, leading to the emergence of urban civilizations, and ultimately, to humanity's dependence on relatively few domesticated animals and plants. Though the subject has been studied extensively, results have typically been interpreted in terms of local cultural sequences. By contrast, The Origins and Spread of Agriculture and Pastoralism in Eurasia provides a continental-scale framework for examining the agricultural "revolution" from its inception nearly 10,000 years ago."--Back cover.

This volume tackles the fundamental and broad-scale questions concerning the spread of early animal herding from its origins in the Near East into Europe beginning in the mid-10th millennium BC. Original work by more than 30 leading international researchers synthesizes of our current knowledge about the origins and spread of animal domestication. In this comprehensive book, the zooarchaeological record and discussions of the evolution and development of Neolithic stock-keeping take center stage in the debate over the profound effects of the Neolithic revolution on both our biological and cultural evolution.

The Origins of Agriculture: An Evolutionary Perspective presents an alternative approach to understanding cultural variation and change. It aims to demonstrate that domestication and the origin of agricultural systems are best understood by attempting to explicate the evolutionary forces that affected that development of domesticates and agricultural systems. The book begins by discussing cultural change, the domestication of plants, and the origin of agricultural systems in the most general of terms. It considers Darwinism in some depth, concentrating on the relationship between natural selection and cultural change. Subsequent chapters examine the world of domestication and agriculture and present a series of concepts that may permit a more natural explanation for these processes. These include concepts such as incidental domestication, specialized domestication, and agricultural domestication. The final two chapters present models for the origin and spread of agricultural systems based upon Darwinian evolutionary theory.