The Neolithic, or New Stone Age, was when people first began growing crops and raising animals instead of only hunting and gathering. It changed nearly everything about how humans lived, from what they ate to how many children they had and how they treated one another. But the switch was not a simple step up, because the first farmers were, on average, less healthy than the foragers before them. And much of their world never really ended, surviving in the DNA, diets and cleared landscapes of people today.
Where and When Farming Began
The first steps toward farming in the eastern Mediterranean go back about 12,000 years.1PubMed Central. Domestication and early agriculture in the Mediterranean Basin: Origins, diffusion, and impact Yet people were already managing herds and tending crops at least 1,000 years before the plants and animals changed shape enough to look domesticated.2PubMed Central. Domestication and early agriculture in the Mediterranean Basin: Origins, diffusion, and impact Domestication was a long, gradual process, not a single discovery. Different crops and animals were tamed in different parts of the Fertile Crescent, the arc of land from Israel and Jordan through Syria, Turkey and Iraq, often more than once.3PubMed Central. Domestication and early agriculture in the Mediterranean Basin: Origins, diffusion, and impact
For generations, people mixed wild foods with tended ones. Early cultivated wheat or goats looked almost wild, which is why early farming is so hard to spot in the evidence. Each year, people saved seed from the best plants, and over time the crops shifted.
The Middle East gave the world wheat, barley, lentils and peas, along with sheep, goats, cattle and pigs as the core farm animals. These same species still dominate the world’s food supply.
Farming also had more than one birthplace. In China, rice was domesticated in the warm, humid south, while millet was domesticated in the colder, drier north.4Science. Early Chinese May Have Eaten Millet Before Rice Each region chose crops that suited its climate, and the Americas later added maize and squash.
How Farming Spread Across Europe
Europe’s early farmers descended mainly from migrants who came from Anatolia, today’s Turkey.5PubMed Central. Parallel paleogenomic transects reveal complex genetic history of early European farmers As they spread between about 10,000 and 5,000 years ago, they mixed with local hunter-gatherers.6PubMed Central. Hunter-gatherer admixture facilitated natural selection in Neolithic European farmers By 6,000 years ago, 20 to 30 percent of their ancestry came from those local groups.7PubMed Central. Hunter-gatherer admixture facilitated natural selection in Neolithic European farmers The mix varied by region and over time, shaped mostly by local encounters.8PubMed Central. Parallel paleogenomic transects reveal complex genetic history of early European farmers
On the ground, this was not an army marching west. It was families moving a few generations at a time, and each new village was often founded by the children of the last one. Hunter-gatherers and farmers lived near each other for centuries. The meeting was not always peaceful, but it often involved marriage.
Farmers spread quickly along the Mediterranean coast, reaching southern France by about 5900 BC.9PubMed Central. The first Neolithic boats in the Mediterranean: The settlement of La Marmotta (Anguillara Sabazia, Lazio, Italy) Dugout canoes of different sizes, like those found at La Marmotta in Italy, could travel both rivers and the sea.10PubMed Central. The first Neolithic boats in the Mediterranean: The settlement of La Marmotta (Anguillara Sabazia, Lazio, Italy)
Animals came along too. Dogs from the Near East entered Europe alongside pigs, cattle, sheep and goats.11PubMed Central. Dogs accompanied humans during the Neolithic expansion into Europe Toward Europe’s western and northern edges, though, that dog lineage blended into native dogs.12PubMed Central. Dogs accompanied humans during the Neolithic expansion into Europe
What Neolithic Farmers Ate and Drank
Dairy fats show up in about a quarter of pottery pieces from Neolithic Britain, so milk had arrived with farming in Britain by the 5th millennium BC.13Journal of Archaeological Science. Dairying in antiquity. III. Evidence from absorbed lipid residues dating to the British Neolithic In Scotland, cereals seem to have been cooked with milk into a kind of gruel.14Nature Communications. Neolithic culinary traditions revealed by cereal, milk and meat lipids in pottery from Scottish crannogs In Poland, pots held residue from curds rather than plain milk, suggesting early cheese-making.15PubMed Central. Detection of dairy products from multiple taxa in Late Neolithic pottery from Poland: an integrated biomolecular approach
Curds and cheese made sense before fresh milk did. Fermenting milk lowers its lactose, so adults who couldn’t digest lactose could still eat it. Curds also keep far longer than fresh milk, and strainers found in pots point to cheese-making.
Most mammals, including early humans, lose the ability to digest milk after weaning. The genetic trait that lets adults keep digesting it appeared around the same time as dairying.16PubMed Central. Evolution of lactase persistence: an example of human niche construction One idea holds that dairying and the trait reinforced each other.17EvoEd. Lactase Persistence Anthropology and Biogeography But famine, crowding and disease may better explain why the trait spread than milk use alone.18PubMed. Dairying, diseases and the evolution of lactase persistence in Europe
A typical day’s food centered on bread or porridge from wheat or barley, with peas, lentils and some meat adding protein. It was a narrower diet than a forager’s varied wild foods, and a failed harvest could mean hunger.
Were Farmers Healthier Than Hunter-Gatherers
Average adult height fell as people relied more on farming.19PubMed. Stature and robusticity during the agricultural transition: evidence from the bioarchaeological record The drop happened worldwide, in Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas, whenever farming arrived.20PubMed. Stature and robusticity during the agricultural transition: evidence from the bioarchaeological record European farmers were shorter than their genes predicted, so poor living conditions rather than ancestry explain it.21PubMed Central. An integrative skeletal and paleogenomic analysis of stature variation suggests relatively reduced health for early European farmers Childhood growth suffered from a narrower diet, unpredictable harvests and more infection.22PubMed Central. An integrative skeletal and paleogenomic analysis of stature variation suggests relatively reduced health for early European farmers
Societies switching to farming also show more infectious disease, dental disease and nutritional shortfalls.23PubMed. Stature and robusticity during the agricultural transition: evidence from the bioarchaeological record Starchy cereals feed the bacteria in the mouth, and crowded villages help germs spread. Scientists read this from skeletons: leg bone length reveals adult height, lines in tooth enamel record childhood hunger, and cavities and worn teeth show a starchy diet.
So why keep farming? It fed more people per acre, even if each person ate worse, and stored grain gave security in some years. Once populations grew, returning to foraging became very hard.
Bigger Families and Booming Populations
Cemeteries show more children’s skeletons once farming began, a sign of a birth boom.24PubMed Central. Explaining the Neolithic Demographic Transition In the Balkans, the average Neolithic woman may have borne 8 to 10 children.25CORDIS | European Commission. Neolithic mothers and the survival of the human species Later population growth there was driven mainly by high fertility.26PubMed Central. The Neolithic Demographic Transition in the Central Balkans: population dynamics reconstruction based on new radiocarbon evidence
Settled life helped. Mothers no longer carried infants long distances, and porridge and milk let babies be weaned earlier, so women could have the next child sooner. Children were also useful labor in fields and with herds. DNA and isotope evidence shows women often moved to their husband’s village, while men and children were usually local.27PubMed Central. Ancient DNA, Strontium isotopes, and osteological analyses shed light on social and kinship organization of the Later Stone Age
Life Inside a Neolithic Village
At Çatalhöyük in Turkey, houses were packed together with no streets between them.28Çatalhöyük Research Project. Architecture People walked on roofs and climbed down a ladder through the ceiling.29Çatalhöyük Research Project. Architecture Each main room had an oven for cooking, platforms for sleeping, and side rooms for storage.30Çatalhöyük Research Project. Architecture The dead were buried beneath the sleeping platforms.31Çatalhöyük Research Project. Architecture Village life seems to have revolved around clusters of linked households sharing ancestors and display spaces.32Cambridge Archaeological Journal. Material Geographies of House Societies: Reconsidering Neolithic Çatalhöyük, Turkey
Living with ancestors under the floor meant the dead stayed part of the household. Burials tied a family’s claim to the house, and plastered skulls and figurines expressed similar ideas across the region.33Antiquity. Skull Cults, Human Sacrifices and Ritual Use of Human Bones in the Neolithic Middle East34OpenMETU. HEADS TO POTS, ANCESTORS TO ARCHITECTURE: SKULL CULTS IN EUROPE AND THE NEAR EAST THROUGH THE PALAEOLITHIC AND THE NEOLITHIC PERIODS (C. 150.000 – 6.000 BC)
Houses were rebuilt in the same spot for generations, and storage rooms show that wealth could be kept. Neighbors lived wall to wall, which helped disease spread.
Inequality and Violence
Measured by house sizes, hunter-gatherers were the most equal, early gardeners less so, and full farming societies the least equal.35PubMed Central. Greater Post-Neolithic Wealth Disparities in Eurasia than in North and Mesoamerica Yet at Çatalhöyük, burial practices became slightly more equal even as society grew more complex.36World Archaeology. No gentry but grave-makers: inequality beyond property accumulation at Neolithic Çatalhöyük Inequality was not inevitable: the biggest gaps appeared after the Neolithic, and choices and customs shaped how unequal a society became.
Violence tells a harsher story. In many Neolithic European groups, about 1 in 10 people show injuries from violence.37PubMed Central. Conflict, violence, and warfare among early farmers in Northwestern Europe Around 5000 BC, the first farmers of central Europe suffered repeated massacres,38Nature Communications. Early Neolithic executions indicated by clustered cranial trauma in the mass grave of Halberstadt and at those sites about half the people show injuries.39PubMed Central. Conflict, violence, and warfare among early farmers in Northwestern Europe At Koszyce in Poland, victims were killed with blows to the head, apparently captured and executed rather than killed fighting.40PubMed Central. Unraveling ancestry, kinship, and violence in a Late Neolithic mass grave
Farming gave people more to fight over. Land, herds and stored food were worth taking, and growing populations pressed against limited land. Climate stress or crop failure could trigger raids. Foragers had less to steal and could simply move away.
Farming and the First Plagues
The oldest known plague bacterium was found in Neolithic farmers in Sweden.41PubMed. Emergence and Spread of Basal Lineages of Yersinia pestis during the Neolithic Decline Plague may have contributed to the decline of Neolithic populations in Europe,42PubMed. Emergence and Spread of Basal Lineages of Yersinia pestis during the Neolithic Decline and it seems to have spread along early trade networks.43PubMed. Emergence and Spread of Basal Lineages of Yersinia pestis during the Neolithic Decline Cleared land drew rodents that could carry plague, and dogs may have passed it to people.44PubMed Central. Neolithic Yersinia pestis infections in humans and a dog Still, most infections were probably isolated cases rather than huge outbreaks.45PubMed Central. Neolithic Yersinia pestis infections in humans and a dog
Living with animals let diseases jump to people, and dense villages with their waste attracted rodents. Trade carried germs between distant groups.
Goods traveled surprisingly far. Obsidian and shells moved huge distances, and Mediterranean shells reached Poland about 2,000 km away.46European Journal of Archaeology. Long-Distance Obsidian Conveyance During the Neolithic: A Critical Analysis of Three Obsidian Blades Found in Poland
Their Legacy in Our Genes and Landscapes
A 5,000-year-old Scandinavian farmer was genetically closest to today’s southern Europeans, while hunter-gatherers there resembled today’s northern Europeans.47PubMed. Origins and genetic legacy of Neolithic farmers and hunter-gatherers in Europe European ancestry test results often include farmer ancestry, and the differences between northern and southern profiles reflect how farmers and foragers mixed. The ability to digest milk as an adult is another inherited trace.
The landscape carries their mark as well. Farmers cleared forests with axes, fire and grazing animals,48European Wilderness Society. The ancient agricultural revolution: How early farming changed Europe’s landscape and soil erosion began.49Environmental Archaeology. Prehistoric Farming Impacts and Erosion Revealed Through a Palaeolimnological Investigation of Lough Inchiquin, Co. Clare, Western Ireland Some open meadows exist only because of ancient grazing.50PubMed Central. Hidden in the pollen: tracing 3000 years of human footprints in a mountain landscape
One hypothesis holds that early forest clearing and rice farming raised greenhouse gases thousands of years ago.51Quaternary Science Reviews. The early anthropogenic hypothesis: A review The evidence cited is that carbon dioxide rose to about 280 ppm before industry, instead of falling to 240 as in past warm periods.52Reviews of Geophysics. The early anthropogenic hypothesis: Challenges and responses This is a hypothesis, not settled science, and critics question whether natural explanations account for the rise.