Session 3: the first farmers and climate change
This session looked at ,000 years covering a crucial time of change, when humans were involved in genetic engineering of plants and animals – we made mutants. This is when the basis of our modern global farming was laid down. At the end of this time, climate change prompted farmers to migrate north-westwards in Europe.
Early archaeologists believed that farming must have developed in the places where the first civilisations grew eg Nile Valley, southern Iraq. Since the 1960s the focus of this event is believed to be the foothills of the Taurus and Zagros Mountains – the northern part of the ancient ‘fertile crescent’.
Palaeobotanists, later joined by geneticists, have established that the wild ancestors of sheep, goat, pig and cattle overlapped in this zone, along with the wild ancestors of wheat, barley, peas, beans and lentils
Dogs were domesticated in the Palaeolithic period, for hunting and food. The first domestication of herd animals took place 10500 years ago, with goats and sheep first and cattle last. Even by 10,000 years ago small farming communities were migrating with animals and plant seed across the Levant and fertile crescent, and even across the sea.
Early archaeologists believed that farming must have developed in the places where the first civilisations grew eg Nile Valley, southern Iraq. Since the 1960s the focus of this event is believed to be the foothills of the Taurus and Zagros Mountains – the northern part of the ancient ‘fertile crescent’.
Palaeobotanists, later joined by geneticists, have established that the wild ancestors of sheep, goat, pig and cattle overlapped in this zone, along with the wild ancestors of wheat, barley, peas, beans and lentils
Dogs were domesticated in the Palaeolithic period, for hunting and food. The first domestication of herd animals took place 10500 years ago, with goats and sheep first and cattle last. Even by 10,000 years ago small farming communities were migrating with animals and plant seed across the Levant and fertile crescent, and even across the sea.
This global environmental change is called ‘the 8.2 kiloyear event’ by climatologists and is one of a series of climate events that have affected humans radically (and will continue to do so).
Farming ended for a while in the zone where it first started. It could have ended altogether at that point but migrant farmers were able to move to a better climate zone to the north west of the point of origin. |
Global warming caused disaster to early farmers and foragers around 8200 years ago.
As the global climate warmed up a series of inundations took place as ice sheets and areas under permafrost thawed. Sea levels rose quickly as did lakes / inland seas. The combined effect worldwide seems to have changed ocean currents in the north Atlantic leading to much colder weather. This cooling caused droughts across the areas where farming had developed. Settlements and forager sites were abandoned, and there are indications that strife between human groups took place in some areas |