Farming begins
People start growing food instead of only finding it
Quick facts
- Farming begins
- About 12,000 years ago
- Where
- About six regions independently, including the Near East, China, Southeast Asia, Africa
- Also called
- The Neolithic Revolution
- What it enabled
- Settled villages, surplus food, and eventually cities
What happened
Beginning about 12,000 years ago, people in several parts of the world independently began to domesticate plants and animals rather than only hunting wild game and gathering wild plants. World History Encyclopedia describes the first crops and livestock being domesticated across roughly six separate regions, including the Near East, China, Southeast Asia, and Africa. This shift, often called the Neolithic Revolution, unfolded over generations rather than overnight.
Why it matters
Farming let people stay in one place and store surplus food, and that surplus is what made permanent villages, then cities, then states and armies and writing possible. Almost everything usually called civilization grows out of this change, so a great deal of recorded history is, at bottom, a consequence of people learning to grow their own food.
How we know
World History Encyclopedia dates the beginning of agriculture to about 12,000 years ago and describes its independent origins in roughly six regions around the world, naming the Near East, China, Southeast Asia, and Africa among them.
Sources
- World History Encyclopedia. Agriculture (World History Encyclopedia) (2023) · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- Domestication and early agriculture in the Mediterranean Basin: origins, diffusion, and impact (PNAS, via PubMed Central) (2008) · Peer-reviewed (author-declared)pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov · Cited as a "journal" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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Related timelines
- The Neolithic Revolution → · Zoom in: from the first domesticated wheat to the first city