The Evolution of Agricultural Technology that were more compatible with humans gradually became domesticated between thirty and fifteen thousand years ago in East Asia and the Middle East In archaeological excavations their bones show that they underwent changes as they became tamer and as their diets changed as well Over the millen nia since then humans have bred dogs into differ ent groups called breeds with an amazing variety of sizes skull shapes colors and ways of behaving As a result of their close connections with humans dogs are far better at understanding human inten tions such as our gestures pointing and our emo tional reactions than wolves dogs are even better at this than our closest primate relatives chimpan zees and gorillas The old saying Dog is Man’s best friend or in updated language Dogs are humans best friends is backed up by millennia of evidence Grazing animals such as goats gazelles and sheep were domesticated before plants were farmed in the Middle East Chickens were domesticated in Southeast Asia at about the same time as the graz ing animals of the Middle East Wild tarpans were domesticated into the horses we know today and wild oxen aurochs became today’s cattle Rather than keeping herds of all of these animals in one place 10
Sheep and goats were among the first animals to be domesticated because these herd animals live together in flocks and because they eat grass and scrubby bushes many societies became pastoral herding flocks long distances to find fresh grass fields Larger domesti cated animals were used for food and hides and as draft animals pulling carts and eventually plows Early farmers set pieces of a plant roots buds leaves underground stems in the ground to pro duce more plants like the parent This is a process we now call vegetative reproduction They eventu ally learned to replant other types each year usu 11 Caption TK
The Evolution of Agricultural Technology THE PLOW AND THE SICKLE Tools for growing and harvesting grain are older than we once thought The first plows were either basic stone tools or sharpened sticks but archaeologists rarely find preserved wood Digging sticks were used to poke holes in the soil or dragged to make a furrow when planting seeds Plowing small fields with a digging stick was tiring work Planters could harvest grain with a sharp flint knife in one hand to cut through the stems but a sickle is more efficient Early sickles for harvesting grain were jawbones of an ungulate such as deer from the Neolithic new Stone Age era some fourteen thousand years ago ally from seeds Today we call these kinds of plants annuals Early farmers learned to save seeds from their best plants to sow for the next year’s crop By patient selection from one season to the next the farmers gradually improved the species This is how wild grasses became the ancestors of modern grains beginning about 10,500 years ago in the Mid dle East In East Asia genetic and archaeological evi dence suggest that the earliest rice was domes 12
People domesticated different kinds of grains to grow in various climate zones such as rice for these flooded fields in China ticated in the Yangtze River region in China about nine thousand to eight thousand years ago Rice is planted in flooded fields that are allowed to dry up gradually as the plants grow Early crops in the Middle East were emmer wheat and einkorn wheat They were first grown at least twelve thousand years ago In Africa the first large-scale crops were the grains teff millet and sorghum Later a variety of beans was grown as well In Australia wild millet was the grain that was farmed People in the Amer 13
