Origins of agriculture and animal husbandry

The dietary change that took place in many human societies with the advent of agriculture around 10000 years ago was a profound departure from ancestral primate foraging and subsistence. 

Before the development of agriculture and animal husbandry hominin dietary choices would have been necessarily limited to minimally processed, wild plant and animal foods as we explained before. With the initial domestication of plants and animals, the original nutrient characteristics of these formerly wild foods changed, subtly at first but more rapidly with advancing technology after the Industrial Revolution [33]. Furthermore, with the advent of agriculture, novel foods were introduced as staples for which the hominin genome had little, if some,  evolutionary experience [34]. More importantly, food-processing procedures were developed, particularly following the Industrial Revolution, which allowed for quantitative and qualitative food and nutrient combinations that had not previously been encountered over the course of hominin evolution [35].

Table 4. The Neolithic Agricultural Revolution.

People before

People after
  • Relied on hunting and gathering
  • Nomads lived in small hunting and food-gathering groups
  • Waited for migrating animals to return each year
  • Learned to farm and were able to produce their own food
  • Settled into permanent villages
  • Learned to domesticate, or tame, animals

The adoption of agriculture, regardless of the reasons, had a transformative effect on lifestyles and population growth. In some parts of the world, farming may have been more work than hunting and gathering, but it also provided a more stable and abundant food supply. On average farming yielded ten to 100 more food calories per acre. The additional calories provided by agriculture were able to sustain a larger global population. On 10000 BCE global population was about 4 million and after the advent of agriculture population raised to 50 million by 1000 BCE, and close to 200 million by the beginning of the common era. 

Figure 7. Trend in population size on global scale. Until 10.000 yBP and the advent of agriculture, population remained constant, numbering less than 10.000.000 people. After the agricultural revolution, however, population skyrocketed. From [64]

Cultivation of crops is often viewed as a move away from dietary diversity, towards a monoculture that has ecosystemic fragility. A dramatic example of such fragility is the Great Famine of Ireland -due to infection of potato crops (Phytophthora infestans), which took place between 1845 and 1852 and resulted in significant population decline [36].

So because agriculture tied people to their land much of this population growth centred around densely settlements, these settlements grew to became towns, and then to cities.