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Essay on Agrarian Societies

In my essay, I explain what agrarian societies are, how long they have been around, and what it means to be an agrarian society. Most people think of Amish people when they think of agrarian societies, and they would be right, but my essay proves that they have been around for a lot longer than the Amish have.

An agrarian society is also known as an agricultural society. Their entire economy rests on their ability to produce and maintain farmland and crops. If a country, area, state or nation creates enough produce from farmland, it may be deemed an agrarian society, even if it is not meaning to be one in the same way that Amish people “intend” to live an agrarian lifestyle. If a country, area, state or nation has farming as its primary source of wealth, then it is an agrarian society; no matter how advanced the society is.

Agrarian societies are not as old as some people think. They have only existed in different parts of the world around as far back as 10,000 years ago, but some still exist today in various locations around the globe. The reason why they are only a relatively new thing in human history is because most societies have always had to mix the methods in which they produce, trade and survive. However, around 10,000 years ago, humans started trading over larger distances to the point where an agrarian society could exist. For example, if it wanted weapons, it could swap them for farmland produce rather than have to mine for the iron and produce them themselves.

There are some modern states around the world and in the US that would be agrarian based on the amount of land that farming takes up in those states, and yet it is not an agrarian society because it takes so few people to manage the farm. Farmland can take up hundreds of square miles of land, but due to modern technology, only a small group of people are needed to maintain the crops. Yet, on the flip side, a single square mile in a state may hold 100,000 people. Even in the 19th century in countries as advanced as Britain and the US, less than half of the population was involved in agriculture, and that was back in the days when horses and bulls were pulling ploughs.

An agrarian society is no longer an agrarian society when less than half of its population is directly involved and engaged with the agricultural production of the society. For example, if you have 11 people in the society and only 5 people are farmers, then it is not an agrarian society. Most modern societies are industrial societies with only a small portion of their population being directly engaged with farming and/or agricultural production. The Commercial and Industrial Revolution in of 1000-1500 C.E. with the Mediterranean city-states was what turned many societies away from farming and into industry. Maritime commercial societies during the middle ages were also the reason why many societies turned away from agriculture. A large part of the spread of industrialism was thanks to the British Empire invading countries and replacing agrarian societies with industrial ones.

The fact that many smaller states became, and still are, highly urbanized has proven that even tiny societies can exist very easily without having most of their population engaged in agriculture. There as some states and locations that are powered simply by natural resources such as mines, or by being centers of manufacturing or trade. The Amish people in the US do represent what people currently think of as an agrarian society, but such societies have been around a very long time and are actually not as needed or required as they once were.

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Early Agricultural Communities

The Neolithic Age brought about the birth of agriculture as we now know it, as communities in Mesopotamia, China, and South America helped lead humans’ way of life from hunting and gathering to farming.

Anthropology, Biology, Ecology, Geography, Human Geography, Social Studies, Ancient Civilizations, World History

Babylonian Ruins

The Sumerians were among the first people to use agriculture. These Babylonian ruins are along the Euphrates River in Mesopotamia.

Photograph by nik wheeler/Alamy stock photo

With the highly efficient, organized nature of modern farming , it can be difficult to envision a world where agriculture was an innovative new technology. Yet, 10,000 to 15,000 years ago, during the Neolithic Age, new agricultural communities in Mesopotamia (in southwest Asia), northern Africa, China, and South America began tending the roots of farming as we know it today. Those early steps toward agriculture helped stabilize populations and allow them to grow—a significant change from the nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes of the earlier era. Farming in the Fertile Crescent Although it is difficult to pinpoint the exact time when agriculture began to take root, anthropological and archaeological finds suggest that Mesopotamia and parts of northern Africa were among the first civilizations to grow crops. Just like there is no single “birthplace” of agriculture, there is also no single event that triggered the change from mostly hunting to mostly farming. Scientists believe it was likely due to a combination of local factors that linked individual farmers to small populations, which grew into larger agricultural communities. Remarkably, agriculture developed around the same time in several different regions around the world, with no known communication between the societies. One reason for this simultaneous push may include local climate change, a post–Ice Age development that created more favorable conditions for settlement and farming. In Mesopotamia, the Sumerians were one of the earliest civilizations to move from hunting and gathering to agriculture for sustenance. With the region’s hot, dry climate, one of the first challenges for early farmers was finding a method to bring water to the crops. The Sumerians built on Egyptian technology and developed an advanced irrigation system for farming. They used ditches, canals, channels, dikes, weirs, and reservoirs to transport water to crops. The Sumerians initially grew wheat as one of their primary crops. Then, when the land accumulated more salt from flooding, draining, and evaporation through the irrigation system, they gravitated toward more salt-tolerant crops like barley instead. In the same region, another early farming community was Ain Ghazal, a Neolithic settlement located near what is now Amman, Jordan. Although the people of Ain Ghazal are now well-known for their early pottery and burial statues, they may be best remembered for growing crops like barley, wheat, chickpeas, and lentils, and for maintaining herds of domesticated animals. Early Agriculture in Ancient China Archaeological data from the Neolithic period shows that Middle Eastern civilizations were not the only ones independently moving toward an agricultural base. In the Far East, agriculture was developing independently of the growth of agriculture in Mesopotamia. One of the earliest known agricultural communities in China was the Yangshao people, whose nomadic hunter-gatherers began to organize into more permanent villages near what is now the Chinese city of Xi’an. By around 9000 B.C.E., settlements in modern-day China and Mongolia were growing a range of subsistence crops. North of the Qin Mountains, farmers grew mostly wheat and millet. In the south, they cultivated rice. Settling close to rivers, such as the Huang He (Yellow River) basin, resolved many of the water issues that had to be addressed with complex irrigation systems elsewhere. Thus, agricultural communities flourished throughout the region. In addition to rice, the early Chinese farmers branched out into crops like tea, soybeans, millet, peaches, persimmons, hemp, and water chestnuts. Their work in domesticating a broad range of plants and animals also led to one of the most significant developments to emerge from this era of Chinese agriculture: the silkworm. Silk production and trade would come to define much of the region’s economy and culture in later centuries. Archaeological finds suggest the Yangshao practiced a very early form of silkworm cultivation (also known as sericulture ) and silk production. Agricultural Development in the West At the same time agriculture was emerging in the East, Neolithic civilizations in South America were evolving toward agriculture as well. Archaeologists found evidence South American civilizations were growing potatoes (which later became a staple crop throughout the Western hemisphere) approximately 10,000 years ago. The Chavin civilizations, which sprung up in the Andes mountain region of South America, have provided some of the best-preserved archaeological evidence of these early agricultural pioneers. Plant and seed remains were found in caves and other high-elevation rock structures in that region. Early forms of lima beans, squash, and peanuts have all been traced to these Andean farmers. To compensate for steep, rocky land, these highland dwellers also developed the farming method known as terracing, or flattening land to limit erosion and enable irrigation of crops. This process allowed agricultural communities to branch out from the more traditionally fertile lowland river areas. Throughout the world, this “Neolithic revolution” helped ground communities, and laid the foundation for the cities, towns, and economic growth that would shape the globe as we know it.

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Farming and the Emergence of Complex Societies 10,000 - 1000 BCE

This Big Era and the Three Essential Questions

About 10,000 BCE (12,000 BP) some human communities began to move in a new direction. For the first time, they began to produce food in a systematic way rather than hunt or collect all their food in the wild. The emergence of (Glossary-without Javascript) farming and the far-reaching social and cultural changes that came with it sets Big Era Three apart from the first two.

From one perspective, the advent of farming was a slow, fragmented process. It happened independently in several different parts of the world at different times. It occurred as a result of people making thousands of minute decisions about food production without anyone being conscious that humans were "inventing (Glossary-without Javascript) agriculture ." And even though some people started farming, others continued for thousands of years to live entirely on wild resources or to combine crop growing with hunting and gathering.

From another perspective we might argue that agriculture took the world by storm. The Paleolithic era of hominin and human tool-making went on for about two million years. Farming settlements, however, appeared on all the major landmasses except Australia within a mere 8,000 years. Foraging societies may have retreated gradually, but today, just 12,000 years after the first signs of agriculture, they have all but disappeared.

We may define farming as a set of interrelated activities that increase the production of those resources that humans can use, such as cattle, grain, or flax, and reduce the production of things humans cannot use, such as weeds or pests. In order to increase the production of resources they can use, farmers systematically manipulate their environment, removing those species they do not want and creating conditions that allow the species they favor to flourish. Thus, we plow and water the land so that our crops can thrive, and we provide food and protection to the animals we need. This is why the emergence of societies based on agriculture, what we call (Glossary-without Javascript) agrarian societies , involved a complex interplay of plants, animals, topography, climate, and weather with human tools, techniques, social habits, and cultural understandings.

The fundamental technological element of this interplay was (Glossary-without Javascript) domestication , the ability to alter the genetic makeup of plants and animals to make them more useful to humans. Scholars have traditionally labeled the early millennia of agriculture the (Glossary-without Javascript) neolithic era (meaning "new stone age"), because humans developed a more varied and sophisticated kit of stone tools in connection with the emergence of farming.

Systematic food production contributed hugely to the amazing biological success of Homo sapiens. In our discussion of Big Era Two , we introduced the concept of (Glossary-without Javascript) extensification , the idea that in Paleolithic times humans multiplied and flourished by spreading thinly across the major landmasses of the world (excepting Antarctica) and by adapting to a wide range of environments, from equatorial forests to Arctic tundra. In Big Era Three, however, a process of " (Glossary-without Javascript) intensification " got under way. This meant that by producing resources from domesticated plants and animals, humans could settle and thrive on a given land area in much greater numbers and density than ever before.

The consequences of intensification were astonishing. In the 9,000 years of Big Era Three, world population rose from about 6 million to about 120 million, a change involving a much faster rate of increase than in the previous eras. Such growth, in turn, required unprecedented experiments in human organization and ways of thinking.

Humans and the Environment

Scholars generally agree that foragers of the Paleolithic enjoyed, at least much of the time, sufficient food supplies, adequate shelter, and shorter daily working hours than most adults do today. Humans did not, therefore, consciously take up crop growing and animal raising because they thought they would have a more secure and satisfying life. In other words, humans seem to have been "pushed" into agriculture rather than "pulled" into it.

When some communities in certain places made the transition to farming, they did it incrementally over centuries or even millennia, and they had no clear vision that they were dropping one whole way of life for another. If we can speak of an "agricultural revolution," we would also have to say that humans backed slowly into it even if, on the scale of 200,000 years, the change was rapid.

The Great Thaw

The coming of agrarian societies was almost certainly connected to the waning of the Pleistocene, or Ice Age, the period beginning at about 15,000 BP when glaciers shrank and both sea levels and global temperatures rose. In several parts of the Northern Hemisphere rainfall increased significantly. This period of 5,000 to 7,000 years was the prelude to the Holocene, the climatic epoch that spans most of the last 10,000 years. Rising seas drowned low-lying coastal shelves as well as land bridges that had previously connected regions separated by water today. Land bridges now under water included spans between Siberia and Alaska, Australia and Papua New Guinea, and Britain and continental Europe.

One consequence of this "great thaw" was the dividing of the world into three distinct zones, whose human populations, as well as other land-bound animals and plants, had very limited contact with one another. These zones were 1) Afroeurasia and adjacent islands, that is Africa, Asia, and Europe combined; 2) the Americas; and 3) Australia. From about 4000 BCE, the Pacific Ocean basin and its island populations began to emerge as a fourth distinct zone. Though humans rarely had contact between one zone and another (until 1500 CE or later), within each of the zones they interacted more or less intensively, depending on patterns of geography, climate, and changing historical circumstances.

A second consequence of the great thaw was that across much of the Northern Hemisphere, warmer, rainier, ice-free conditions permitted forests, meadowlands, and small animal populations to flourish. The natural bounty was so great in some localities that human bands began to settle in one place all or part of the year to forage and hunt. That is, they became (Glossary-without Javascript) sedentary , settled in hamlets or villages rather than moving from camp to camp. For example, in the relatively well-watered part of Southwest Asia we call the (Glossary-without Javascript) Fertile Crescent , groups began sometime between 10,000 and 13,000 BP to found tiny settlements in order to collect plentiful stands of wild grain and other edible plants and animals.

The Dawn of Domestication

In time, these groups took up the habit of protecting their wild grain fields against weeds, drought, and birds. Eventually they started broadcasting edible plant seeds onto new ground to increase the yield. Finally, they began selecting and planting seeds from individual plants that seemed most desirable for their size, taste, and nutrition. In other words, humans learned how to control and manipulate the reproduction of plants that were bigger, tastier, more nutritious, and easier to grow, harvest, store, and cook than were wild food plants. Systematic domestication was under way!

In the Fertile Crescent, key domesticates included the ancestors of wheat, barley, rye, and several other edible plants. Selecting and breeding particular animal species—sheep, goats, cattle, pigs—that were good to eat and easy to manage occurred in a similar way. In effect, humans started grooming the natural environment to reduce the organisms they did not want (weeds, predatory wolves) and to increase the number of organisms they did want (grains, legumes, wool-bearing sheep, hunting dogs).

Co-Dependency

Eventually, plant-growing and animal-raising communities became "co-dependent" with their domesticates. That is, humans came to rely on these genetically altered species to survive. In turn, domesticated plants and animals were so changed that they would thrive only if humans took care of them. For example, the maize, or corn, that we see in fields today can no longer reproduce without human help.

The great advantage of co-dependency was that a community could rely fairly predictably on a given area of land to produce sufficient, even surplus, yields of hardy, tasty food. Populations of both humans and their domesticates tended to grow accordingly. On the darker side, co-dependency was a kind of trap: a farming community, which had to huddle together in a crowded village and labor long hours in the fields, could not go back to a foraging way of life even if it wanted to. And, as we will see, a lot of new problems appeared as humans began to live together in denser communities, from new types of diseases to the buildup of village waste and rubbish.

Environmental Intervention

The Fertile Crescent was an early incubator of agriculture, but it was by no means the only one. Between 12,000 and 3000 BCE, similar processes involving a great variety of domesticates occurred in several different parts of the world. The intensification in population densities and economic productivity that farming permitted also spurred humans to intervene in the natural and physical environment as never before. As farmers cleared more land, planted more crops, and pastured more animals, they enhanced their species’ biological success. That is, there occurred a positive feedback cycle of ever-increasing population and productivity that looked something like this:

Beginning about 6000 BCE, intensification in particular parts of the world moved to a level that required radical innovations in the way humans lived and worked.

Crowded Cities

First in the Tigris-Euphrates and Nile River valleys, then the Indus valley, and later in China’s Huang River (Huang He) valley and a few other regions, societies emerged that were far larger and denser than the farming communities of the neolithic period. We refer to these big concentrations of people as (Glossary-without Javascript) complex societies , or, more traditionally, as (Glossary-without Javascript) civilizations .

Their most conspicuous characteristic was cities. Early cities were centers of power, manufacturing, and creativity. Building and preserving them, however, required drastic alterations of the local environment to produce sufficient food, building materials, and sources of energy. The price of this intervention was high. Dense urban societies were extremely vulnerable to changes in weather, climate, disease conditions, wood supplies, and trade links to distant regions. After the appearance of complex societies, humans stepped up their efforts to manipulate and control their physical and natural environment. This had great benefits but also produced a negative feedback cycle.

• Deforestation and consequent erosion threatened periodic food shortages and social conflict.
• Habitation in densely packed villages and cities brought humans in closer contact with disease-carrying animals, resulting in greater vulnerability to epidemic infections.
• In the cases of some complex societies, ecological problems stimulated social and economic innovations to improve conditions or stave off disaster. In some other cases, however, these problems led eventually to economic, demographic, or political collapse.

Humans and Other Humans

The intensification of population and production that came with Big Era Three obliged humans to experiment with new forms of social organization. The customs and rules that governed social relationships in a foraging band of twenty-five or thirty people were no longer adequate.

The permanent farming settlements that multiplied in Afroeurasia in the early millennia of the era numbered as few as several dozen people to as many as 10,000. These communities had to work together in more complicated ways and on a larger scale than was the case in foraging bands. Even so, social relations may not have changed greatly from foraging days. Men and women probably continued to treat each other fairly equally. No one had a full-time job other than farming. Some individuals no doubt became leaders because they were strong or intelligent. No individual or group, however, had formal power to lord over the rest.

Early Complex Societies

Only after about 4000 BCE did truly staggering changes occur in social customs and institutions. The complex societies that arose in the Tigris-Euphrates, Nile, and Indus valleys, and somewhat later in other regions, were cauldrons of intensification. That is, people lived and worked together in much larger, denser communities than had ever existed. These societies shared a number of fundamental characteristics, which we generally associate with civilizations:

• Cities arose, the early ones varying somewhat in their forms and functions. By 2250 BCE, there were about eight cities in the world that had 30,000 or more inhabitants. By 1200 BCE, there were about sixteen cities that big.
• Some people took up full-time specialized occupations and professions (artisans, merchants, soldiers, priests, and so on) rather than spending most of their time collecting, producing, or processing food.
• A hierarchy of social classes appeared in which some men and women—the elite class—had more wealth, power, and privilege than did others. Also, men became dominant over women in political and social life, leading to (Glossary-without Javascript) patriarchy .
• The state, that is, a centralized system of government and command, was invented. This meant that a minority group—kings, queens, high officials, priests, generals—exercised control over the labor and social behavior of everyone else.
• Complex exchanges of food and other products took place within the complex society, and lines of trade connected the society to neighbors near and far.
• Technological innovations multiplied, and each new useful invention tended to suggest several others.
• Monumental building took place—city walls, temples, palaces, public plazas, and tombs of rulers.
• A system of writing, or at least a complex method of record-keeping, came into use.
• Spiritual belief systems, public laws, and artistic expressions all became richer and more complex.
• Creative individuals collaborated with the ruling class to lay the foundations of astronomy, mathematics, and chemistry, as well as civil engineering and architecture.

A society did not have to exhibit every one of these characteristics to qualify as a civilization. The checklist is less important than the fact that all these social, cultural, economic, and political elements interacted dynamically with one another. The synergism among them made the society complex, that is, made it recognizable as a civilization

Animal-Herding Societies

From about the fourth millennium BCE, Afroeurasia saw the development of a new type of society and economy in parts of the (Glossary-without Javascript) Great Arid Zone . This is the belt of dry and semi-arid land that extends across Afroeurasia from the Sahara Desert in the west to Manchuria in northern China. Here, communities began to organize themselves around a specialized way of life based on herding domesticated animals, whether sheep, cattle, horses, or camels. Known as (Glossary-without Javascript) pastoral nomadism , this economic system permitted humans to adapt in larger numbers than ever before to climates where intensive farming was not possible. Pastoral nomads lived mainly on the products of their livestock—meat, milk, blood, hides, hair, wool, and bone. They often grazed and migrated over extensive areas, and they planted crops either not at all or as a minor, supplemental activity.

By the third millennium BCE, animal-breeding societies were appearing in a number of regions, notably along the margins of the Great Arid Zone. These communities found they could adapt to dry conditions because sheep, cattle, and a few other domesticates could thrive on wild grasses and shrubs. These animals converted vegetable matter that humans could not digest into meat, milk, and blood, which they could. That is, humans became experts at transforming the natural flora of arid lands into an animal diet high in protein and fat.

Pastoral communities usually followed regular migratory routes from pasture to pasture as the seasons changed. When families were on the move, they lived in hide tents or other movable dwellings, and their belongings had to be limited to what they could carry along. This does not mean that they wished to cut themselves off from farming societies or cities. Rather, pastoralists eagerly purchased farm produce or manufactures in exchange for their hides, wool, dairy products, and sometimes their services as soldiers and bodyguards. The ecological borders between pastoral societies and town-building populations were usually scenes of lively trade.

Because pastoral societies were mobile, not permanently settled, they expressed social relationships not so much in terms of where people lived but rather in terms of kinship, that is, who was related by "blood" to whom—closely, distantly, or not at all. They typically had a tribal organization, though this has nothing to do with how "advanced" or "primitive" they were. Rather, we define a tribe as a group whose members claim to be descended from a common ancestor. Usually, a tribe is typically the largest group in a region claiming shared descent. Tribes may also be divided into smaller groups of people who see themselves as relatively more closely related, from clans to lineages to nuclear families.

In the latter part of Big Era Three, we see emerging an important long-term and recurring pattern in history: encounters involving both peaceful exchanges and violent clashes between agrarian peoples and pastoral nomads of Inner Eurasia, the Sahara Desert, and other sectors of the Great Arid Zone. An early example is the far-reaching social and political change that occurred in the second and first millennia BCE when several different pastoral peoples of Inner Eurasia pressed into the agrarian, urbanized regions of Southwest Asia, India, and Europe, sometimes moving in peacefully, sometimes raiding, sometimes conquering.

Also, the mobility of pastoral societies and their vital interests in trade meant that they served to link different agrarian societies with one another and to encourage growth of long networks of commercial and cultural exchange. The best known of these networks is the Inner Eurasian silk roads, the series of trade routes that pastoral peoples dominated and that moved goods and ideas between China in the east and India, Southwest Asia, and the Mediterranean region to the west.

Humans and Ideas

It was in Big Era Two that Homo sapiens evolved its capacity for language. This wondrous skill meant that humans could engage in (Glossary-without Javascript) collective learning , not only sharing information and ideas from one community to another, sometimes across great distances, but also passing an ever-increasing stockpile of beliefs from one generation to the next.

In Big Era Three, world population started growing at a faster rate than ever before. The size and density of communities expanded, and networks of communication by land and sea became more extensive and sophisticated. Along with these developments came, as we might well expect, an intensification in the flow of information and a general speed-up in the accumulation of knowledge of all kinds.

One example is religious knowledge. In the early millennia of Big Era Three certain ideas, practices, and artistic expressions centered on the worship of female deities spread widely along routes of trade and migration to embrace a large part of western Eurasia. Another example is the idea and technology of writing, which emerged first, as far as we know, in either Egypt or Mesopotamia and spread widely from there to the eastern Mediterranean and India. A third example is the horse-drawn chariot, which may have first appeared in the Inner Eurasian steppes and within less than a thousand years spread all across Eurasia from western Europe to China.

Complex Societies As Centers of Innovation

Since we are focusing here on large-scale changes in world history, we cannot discuss in detail the numerous scientific, technological, and cultural innovations that complex societies achieved in Big Era Three in Afroeurasia and, from the second millennium BCE, in Mesoamerica (Mexico and Central America) and South America.

To take just one early example, the city-dwellers of Sumer in southern Mesopotamia, which is as far as we know the earliest urban civilization, made fundamental scientific and technical breakthroughs in the fourth and third millennia BCE. Sometime before 3000 BCE, Sumerian scribes worked out a system of numerical notation in the writing script they used, called cuneiform. For computation they devised both base-ten (decimal) and base-sixty systems. The base-sixty method has endured in the ways we keep time and reckon the circumference of a circle—60 seconds to the minute, 60 minutes to the hour, and 360 degrees in the circumference of a circle. Sumerians used a combination of base-ten and base-sixty mathematics, together with a growing understanding of geometry, for everyday government and commerce, as well as to survey land, chart the stars, design buildings, and build irrigation works. Other technical innovations included the seed drill, the vaulted arch, refinements in bronze metallurgy, and, most ingenious of all, the wheel. This concept was probably first applied to pottery making, later to transport and plowing.

Different Cultural Styles

Within complex societies, such as those that emerged in the great river valleys, the interchange of information and ideas tended to be so intense that each society developed a distinct cultural style. We can discern these distinctive styles today in the surviving remnants of buildings, art objects, written texts, tools, and other material remains.

We should, however, keep two ideas in mind. One is that all complex societies were invariably changing, rather than possessing timeless, static cultural traits. The style of a civilization changed from one generation to the next because cultural expressions and values were invariably bound up with the natural environment, economic life, and politics, which were continuously changing as well. The second point is that early civilizations were not culturally self-contained. All of them developed and changed as they did partly because of their connections to other societies near and far, connections that played themselves out in trade, migration, war, and cultural exchange.

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World history

Course: world history   >   unit 1.

• The Neolithic Revolution and early agriculture

The dawn of agriculture

• The spread of agriculture
• Where did agriculture come from?
• Early civilizations
• Social, political, and environmental characteristics of early civilizations
• Why did human societies get more complex?
• Neolithic Revolution and the birth of agriculture

• Agriculture likely began during the Neolithic Era before roughly 9000 BCE when polished stone tools were developed and the last ice age ended.
• Historians have several theories about why many societies switched from hunting and foraging to settled agriculture.
• One of these theories is that a surplus in production led to greater population. Not everyone needed to be focused on food production, which led to specialization of labor and complex societies.

The world before agriculture

The birth of agriculture, why did agriculture emerge when and where it did.

• End of a glacial period: The last glacial period ended 10,000 to 15,000 years ago. This seems to coincide with the emergence of agriculture. After the glacial period ended, there was more moisture in the air, less frozen soil, and better conditions overall for more plant and animal life. These conditions would have also been more suitable for agriculture. This theory still has several open questions: 1) Why have we not found evidence of agriculture during the last interglacial—warmer—period over 100,000 years ago? Have we just not found it yet? 2) Even during the glacial period, weren’t there some places on Earth in the tropics that would have still been suitable for agriculture?
• Continued human development: Even though anatomically modern humans have been around for roughly 200,000 years, our brains, language, and culture may have continued to develop and change—including through natural selection. It is possible that only 10,000 to 20,000 years ago did we first have the right mix of environmental, mental, and cultural development to implement agriculture. This theory is bolstered by the fact that the dawn of agriculture seems to coincide with humans being able to make the more sophisticated stone objects which define the Neolithic period.

Pastoralism: a branch of agriculture

Impact of agriculture, what do you think.

• What do you think is the most compelling theory about the birth of agriculture?
• What are the advantages and disadvantages of hunting and foraging versus agriculture?
• See Bentley, Jerry H. et. al., Traditions and Encounters: A Global Perspective on the Past (New York: McGraw-Hill Education, 2015), 15-19.
• See Bulliet, Richard W. et. al.: _The Earth and its Peoples: A Global History (Boston, Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, 2011), 13-16.
• Bentley et. al., Traditions and Encounters , 16.

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Agrarian Society and its Characteristics

An agrarian society focuses its mode of production primarily on agriculture and the cultivation of large fields.

Throughout history, societies have continuously transitioned and evolved becoming more and more complex and diverse in shape and functions. Starting from hunting and gathering society (the simplest of the societies), societies have progressed through multiple phases and ended up into industrial societies.

It was around 3000 B.C. or 6000 years ago that the invention of the plough led to the beginning of the agrarian society. Agrarian societies first arose in ancient Egypt. The societies were based on the introduction of the plough and the harnessing of animal power.

Characteristics of an Agrarian Society

An agrarian society is different and unique in its characteristics from all the previous phases of society.

Cultivation of Land through the Plough

Based on the invention of the plough around 3000 B.C., the ‘agrarian revolution’ marked the beginning of agrarian society. This invention has enabled people to make a great leap forward in food production. It is because the use of ploughs increased the productivity of the land by bringing the nutrients to the surface that have sunk out of reach of the roots of plants. Moreover, it also returns weeds to the soil to act as fertilizers.

Furthermore, the use of animal power to pull the plough enabled great productivity of the soil. The animal-drawn plough could do the work of many working with sticks or hand hoes.

Hence, combining irrigation techniques with the use of a plough increased productivity and made the increased yields more reliable. Further, it has also made it possible to work on the same patch of land repeatedly by cultivating it again and again. Thus, it resulted in the permanent settlements of societies and communities in one area.

An Increase in the Size of Society

The size of the agrarian society is much greater than that of horticultural or pastoral communities. It relieves the burden of working in the field for a fairly large number of people who can engage themselves in other types of activities on a full-time basis. Thus, the full-time specialists who engage themselves in non-agricultural activities tend to concentrate in compact places which ultimately led to the birth of cities.

The Emergence of Political Institutions

Agrarian societies, in course of time, lead to the establishment of more elaborate political institutions. As land is the basis for wealth in an agrarian society; thus, landowners enjoy more power and prestige than those lacking lands. Thus, power is concentrated in the hands of few individuals (the landowners).

In well-established agrarian societies, a formalized government bureaucracy emerges duly assisted by a legal system. Moreover, the court system of providing justice also emerges. These developments make the state the most powerful separate institution.

Evolution of Distinct Social Classes

Agrarian societies produce relatively greater wealth which is unequally shared. As a result, a small minority enjoys the surplus produced by the working majority. Thus, for the first time, two distinct social classes – those who own the land and those who work on the land of others – emerge.

The land is the major source of wealth and is individually owned and inherited. This actually creates the major difference between the social strata. The old feudal system of Europe is an example of such differences between the strata.

The Emergence of Clearly Defined Economic Institutions

Agrarian societies provide the basis for the establishment of economic institutions. With the produced surplus, the members of the society engage in trade with other societies. Thus, trade becomes more elaborate and money is used here as a medium of exchange.

The trade which takes place on an elaborate scale demands the maintenance of records of the transaction, crop harvest, taxation, government rules and regulations. These developments provide an incentive for the enrichment of systematic writing which is found only in these societies and not in the previous ones.

Religious Becomes a Separate Institution

As societies become more and more complex, religion also becomes more complex with the status of a separate institution. A religion requires full-time officials which an agrarian society can easily provide given that it relieves the burden of working in the field for a fairly large number of people who can give their full-time to religion.

Warfare and Empire Building

Agrarian societies constantly fight amongst themselves. Hence, warfare becomes a regular feature.  Moreover, these societies also engage themselves in systematic empire building.

These developments necessitate the formation of an effective military organization. The evolving sense of saving land and properties from foreign invasion also necessitates the formation of military force.

Thus, for the first time, full-time permanent armies make their appearance. These armies require the development of proper roads and waterways. Such developments in the field of transport also bring the previously isolated communities into contact with one another.

Enrichment of Culture

Since the agrarian society produces more food than is necessary for subsistence, it is able to support people whose sole purpose is to provide ideas to the culture . Hence, poets, writers, historians, artists, scientists, architects and such other talented people spend their days cultivating wisdom and beauty rather than fields.

Surplus agricultural resources are now invested in new cultural artefacts such as paintings, statues, public buildings, monuments, palaces and stadiums.

Revolutionary Transition in the Social Structure

In comparison with many other less evolved types of societies, the agrarian society has a far more complex social structure and culture. The transition from the previous social structures to the present one has been revolutionary.

The number of statuses multiplies, population size increases, cities appear, new institutions emerge, social classes arise, political and economic inequality becomes built into the social structure, and culture becomes much more diversified and heterogeneous.

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The Beginnings of the Columbian Exchange

This essay is about the Columbian Exchange, which began in 1492 with Christopher Columbus’s voyage to the Americas. It details how this event marked the start of extensive biological and cultural exchanges between the Old and New Worlds. The essay highlights the introduction of new crops like maize, potatoes, and tomatoes to Europe, Africa, and Asia, and the impact of European crops and animals on the Americas. It also discusses the devastating effects of diseases on indigenous populations and the forced migration of African slaves. The essay emphasizes the profound and lasting effects of the Columbian Exchange on global agriculture, culture, and demographics.

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In 1492, Christopher Columbus embarked on his maiden voyage to the Americas, inaugurating the Columbian Exchange. His arrival in the Caribbean marked not merely a new frontier for exploration but the genesis of an extensive and perpetual interchange between the Old and New Worlds. This exchange of commodities, ideologies, and maladies would fundamentally alter the global landscape, fostering connections and repercussions that endure to the present day.

Prior to Columbus’s advent, the Americas had languished in isolation from the rest of the world for millennia.

This sequestration engendered profound disparities in flora, fauna, and pathologies between the Americas and Europe, Africa, and Asia. Columbus’s transatlantic traverse unwittingly triggered a cascade of exchanges that would transmute both hemispheres.

Among the most salient aspects of the Columbian Exchange was the introduction of novel crops to disparate corners of the globe. The Americas harbored a plethora of plant species hitherto unknown to denizens of Europe, Africa, and Asia. Maize (corn), potatoes, tomatoes, and cacao (the progenitor of chocolate) were amongst the botanical treasures repatriated to the Old World. These botanical novelties wrought a profound influence on culinary proclivities and agrarian methodologies across Europe, Africa, and Asia. For instance, potatoes ascended as a dietary staple in Ireland and northern Europe, fostering demographic expansion and agricultural heterogeneity. Maize disseminated to Africa and Asia, emerging as a pivotal sustenance source. The availability of these newfound crops served to avert famines and bolster population growth in myriad regions.

Conversely, Europeans introduced staples such as wheat, rice, and sugarcane to the Americas. These crops flourished in the New World, becoming integral components of the agrarian economy. Wheat, an exotic import to the Americas, ascended as a staple crop in various locales across North and South America. Sugarcane, transplanted from Asia to the Caribbean and South America, emerged as a principal economic catalyst, particularly in the cultivation of plantations.

The transference of fauna also played a pivotal role in societal metamorphosis. Europeans imported horses, cattle, swine, and ovine species to the Americas. Horses, in particular, wrought transformative effects upon numerous Native American civilizations. Prior to equine arrival, denizens of the Great Plains relied predominantly on canines for transportation and subsistence hunting. Equine introduction facilitated extended travel, augmented hunting efficiency, and enhanced commercial and martial engagements. Bovine and porcine specimens furnished novel sustenance sources and labor pools, reshaping agricultural methodologies and dietary paradigms in the New World.

However, not all facets of the Columbian Exchange bore beneficial fruit. The introduction of European maladies to the Americas exacted a grievous toll upon indigenous populations. Ailments such as smallpox, measles, and influenza, hitherto alien to the Americas, wreaked havoc upon populations devoid of immunological defenses, propagating with alarming celerity and inducing widespread mortality. Entire communities were decimated, engendering precipitous demographic decline with profound societal and political ramifications. The decimation of indigenous populace facilitated European colonial incursions and dominion over the Americas.

Conversely, the Americas bequeathed syphilis upon the Old World. The proliferation of this affliction within Europe precipitated substantial healthcare challenges and elicited diverse medical ripostes. The contagion exchange underscored the susceptibility of populations to novel pathogens and highlighted the unintended corollaries of burgeoning global interactions.

Cultural interchanges constituted a salient facet of the Columbian Exchange. European colonizers imported their vernaculars, faiths, and governmental frameworks to the Americas, imprinting indelible imprints upon nascent societies in the New World. Christianity proliferated prodigiously, frequently at the expense of indigenous spiritual systems, yielding marked cultural and religious shifts. European tongues, prominently Spanish, Portuguese, and English, ascended to primacy in the Americas, fashioning the region’s linguistic terrain.

The transmission of technology and erudition represented another pivotal dimension. Europeans disseminated novel implements, armaments, and agricultural methodologies to the Americas, enhancing agrarian productivity and reshaping martial tactics. Conversely, Native Americans imparted their familiarity with local environs, curative botanicals, and survival stratagems to Europeans, enriching their comprehension of the New World. These technological and eruditional transferences facilitated the amalgamation and assimilation of disparate cultures.

The human facet of the Columbian Exchange encompassed the coerced migration of African captives to the Americas. The transatlantic slave trade, inaugurated in the early 16th century, burgeoned into a linchpin of colonial economies. Multitudes of Africans were involuntarily transported to toil on plantations, notably in the Caribbean and South America. This forced diaspora exerted a profound imprint upon the demographic and cultural tapestry of the Americas, contributing to the emergence of diverse and multicultural societies. The legacy of slavery reverberates to this day, exerting a palpable influence upon social and racial dynamics in the Americas.

The repercussions of the Columbian Exchange were far-reaching and perdure into contemporary times. It constituted an epoch of seismic ecological, agrarian, cultural, and sociological upheaval that indelibly reshaped the global panorama. The infusion of novel crops and fauna engendered substantial dietary and agrarian transformations worldwide, whilst the transmission of maladies and populace had enduring demographic repercussions.

In summation, the Columbian Exchange commenced with Columbus’s forays in 1492 and inaugurated an epoch of unparalleled biological and cultural interchanges between the Old and New Worlds. Its legacy stands as a testament to the interconnectedness of human civilizations and the enduring repercussions of historical occurrences upon the contemporary milieu. The Columbian Exchange transcended mere historical epoch, constituting a multifaceted and ongoing process that continues to mold our interconnected world.

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Essay on Agrarian Societies

In my essay, I explain what agrarian societies are, how long they have been around, and what it means to be an agrarian society. Most people think of Amish people when they think of agrarian societies, and they would be right, but my essay proves that they have been around for a lot longer than the Amish have.

An agrarian society is also known as an agricultural society. Their entire economy rests on their ability to produce and maintain farmland and crops. If a country, area, state or nation creates enough produce from farmland, it may be deemed an agrarian society, even if it is not meaning to be one in the same way that Amish people “intend” to live an agrarian lifestyle. If a country, area, state or nation has farming as its primary source of wealth, then it is an agrarian society; no matter how advanced the society is. Agrarian societies are not as old as some people think. They have only existed in different parts of the world around as far back as 10,000 years ago, but some still exist today in various locations around the globe.

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The reason why they are only a relatively new thing in human history is because most societies have always had to mix the methods in which they produce, trade and survive. However, around 10,000 years ago, humans started trading over larger distances to the point where an agrarian society could exist. For example, if it wanted weapons, it could swap them for farmland produce rather than have to mine for the iron and produce them themselves. There are some modern states around the world and in the US that would be agrarian based on the amount of land that farming takes up in those states, and yet it is not an agrarian society because it takes so few people to manage the farm. Farmland can take up hundreds of square miles of land, but due to modern technology, only a small group of people are needed to maintain the crops.

Yet, on the flip side, a single square mile in a state may hold 100,000 people. Even in the 19th century in countries as advanced as Britain and the US, less than half of the population was involved in agriculture, and that was back in the days when horses and bulls were pulling ploughs. An agrarian society is no longer an agrarian society when less than half of its population is directly involved and engaged with the agricultural production of the society. For example, if you have 11 people in the society and only 5 people are farmers, then it is not an agrarian society. Most modern societies are industrial societies with only a small portion of their population being directly engaged with farming and/or agricultural production. The Commercial and Industrial Revolution in of 1000-1500 C.

E. with the Mediterranean city-states was what turned many societies away from farming and into industry. Maritime commercial societies during the middle ages were also the reason why many societies turned away from agriculture. A large part of the spread of industrialism was thanks to the British Empire invading countries and replacing agrarian societies with industrial ones. Conclusion The fact that many smaller states became, and still are, highly urbanized has proven that even tiny societies can exist very easily without having most of their population engaged in agriculture.

There as some states and locations that are powered simply by natural resources such as mines, or by being centers of manufacturing or trade. The Amish people in the US do represent what people currently think of as an agrarian society, but such societies have been around a very long time and are actually not as needed or required as they once were.

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