1.3 Early farmers

• Geschiedenis
• Middelbare school
• havo
• Leerjaar 1

1. The Age of Hunters and Farmers

1.3 Early Farmers

What you can do after this lesson

• explain when and why first agriculture began in the near east
  
• explain how the first farmers discovered how to grow their own crops
  
• explain the meaning of domestication
  
• explain how the first farmers lived
  

Word Duty

Ice Age: periods in the past when areas of the world were covered by ice and it was very cold

Agriculture: a way of living where people grow their own crops and keep animals

Fertile Crescent: area around the rivers Tigris, Euphrates and Nile

Agricultural revolution: farming was introduced, a completely new way of living in prehistory

Domestication: tame animals for your own use

Pottery: an invention of farmers to store products

KEY WORDS

What do you remember about the hunter-gatherers?

Introduction

In this section, we will see that prehistoric people changed from being hunter-gatherers to farmers. Farmers are people who grow crops and keep animals. This change did not happen overnight. It took thousands of years. But how did it start?

Climate change

• Before > ice age
• 10.000 B.C. climate changed 
• In the Middle East they developed a new way of making food: agriculture

Source 1.3.1

The changes in temperature on Earth in prehistory. You can see that there have been several Ice Ages in the past.

Hunting-gathering to farming

• The Fertile Crescent
• Plants grow if you put seeds in the ground
• Storing wild grain > plant next time
• Grow their own food
• No need to travel anymore > farmers

Source 1.3.2

Source 1.3.2

 A map of the Fertile Crescent in the Middle East.

The Fertile Crescent

Read 'The Fertile Crescent'.
Write a short summary explaining what the Fertile Crescent is and why people stopped traveling.

fertile

villages

grain

population

Nile

crescent moon

10,000

Keeping animals

• First farming + hunting animals
• Hard to hunt animals if you stay in one place
• 6000 B.C. people in the Fertile Crescent learned how to tame animals > domestication
• Breeding/keeping of cows, goats, pigs, sheep and horses

Source 1.3.3

The aurochs were bred to become smaller instead of bigger (present-day drawing).

Dogs were already domesticated by hunter-gatherers around 14,000 years ago, to help them during the hunt.

What do you remember about the early farmers

Create correct English sentences by dragging the words at the bottom to the correct place in the sentence:

so the people 

in the Fertile Crescent  

The population 

needed to find 

new farm land 

was growing,  

Create correct English sentences by dragging the words at the bottom to the correct place in the sentence:

around 5300 BC 

appeared  

The first farmers   

in our region 

Agriculture in our region

• The population in the Fertile Crescent kept growing > agriculture spread from the Middle East to South and Central-Europe. 
  
• Pottery is an example of new knowledge spread by the farmers.
• Pottery was used for storing products like grain and seeds
• People decorated pottery, those who decorated the pottery with straight lines belong to the Linear Pottery Culture > this culture is found in large parts of Europe.
• Funnel Beaker Culture

Source 1.3.4

Pottery from the Linear Pottery Culture (5400 - 4900 BC).

Source 1.3.5

 Pottery from the Funnel Beaker Culture (2500 - 2200 BC).

Source 1.3.6

A reconstruction of a group of farmers with their crops and animals (present-day drawing).

Agriculture did not spread all the way from the Fertile Crescent to China or Latin America. Farming spontaneously began in more than one place in the world around the same time. People just needed soil and a good temperature for their crops to grow. In Latin America these first crops were not wheat or barley, but maize or manioc. Here, the first animals farmers kept were not goats and sheep, but alpacas.