Question

what are the various theories regarding the beginning of agriculture ​

Answer 1

Answer:

Beginning of the Holocene period 10000 bp. Warmer, glacial melting with rise in sea level, wetter with more rain. More vegetation, fewer deserts. But not the same everywhere. Maybe just another interglacial, but now we have human intervention. Greenhouse effect? Culture supervenes on geology as well as physical evolution.

Mesolithic (European), Archaic (Americas) increased exploitation of the environment and continued subsistence shift.

Neolithic- beginning of agriculture 10000bp. Implicit is domestication of plants and animals. Change, via ARTIFICIAL selection, from wild forms to a more useful form, such as wolf to dog, grasses to wheat, etc. In domestication of animals, such as dogs and cattle, more successful if there is a strong dominance hierarchy in the herd. Then humans can become the most dominant and the other animals fall in line. As in artificial selective evolution of wolf to dog. The animals to be domesticated are selectively bred in captivity and thus modified from their wild ancestors. Dog wolf, cattle, auroch, pig wild boar, etc.

First, movements of animals were controlled, then selective breeding and regulation os sex ration and age structure. This changed the gene frequency and anatomical changes resulted. Apparently there were societal shifts back and forth between hunting and pastoralism befor actual herd management occurred. By about 10000 bp goats were being domesticated in the Zagros Mountains.