explain Neolithic age in 25O words
Answers
Explanation:
The Neolithic Age
In our fast-paced, technologically advanced society, we give little thought to where our fruits, vegetables, and grains come from as we shop in the grocery store. Indeed, many people in the United States and other parts of the developed world have moved away from an agriculturally-based lifestyle.
However, agriculture was one of the most important developments in all of human history, which occurred during what historians call the Neolithic Age. Let's define this period, and look into some of its characteristics, paying special attention to the Agricultural Revolution.
The Neolithic Age began around 12,000 years ago and ended as civilizations started to rise around 3500 BCE. The term Neolithic comes from two words: neo, or new, and lithic, or stone. As such, this time period is sometimes referred to as the New Stone Age.
Humans in the Neolithic Age still used stone tools and weapons, but they were starting to enhance their stone tools. There's evidence of initial metallurgy as well, and also creating more pottery.
But what really distinguishes the New Stone Age from the Old Stone Age, or Paleolithic Age, that preceded it, is a very important characteristic that is the key feature of the time period: the invention of agriculture.
The Agricultural Revolution
Previously, humans largely lived as hunter-gatherers in very small and mobile groups. Largely equal in terms of skill-set, there were some gendered differences, as men hunted and women gathered plants, the latter of which actually made up a majority of their diets.
Around the end of the last Ice Age, however, things started to change. Earth warmed, allowing an environment better suited for humans to flourish. As a result, the human population rose, and some scholars think they may have begun to plant and grow their own food to feed the growing numbers of people. This time, known as the Agricultural Revolution, would truly revolutionize how humans lived their lives. As women were the gatherers in earlier bands of humans, they were likely the ones who began the initial practices of agriculture.
Domestication
In many areas, especially in Eurasia, agriculture and its techniques spread easily along similar climactic zones. In Africa and the Americas, agriculture also developed, but because of the different climactic zones on the two continents' north-south axis, it developed in a more scattered fashion.