08.31.09
The Neolithic diffusion
Explaining the Spread of Agriculture into Europe
The practice of growing food and keeping livestock was invented numerous times throughout the world. One ‘center’ of agriculture is said to be the Middle East. Despite the fact that calling the Middle East a “center” in this context is a gross oversimplification, it is true that agriculture was practiced in Anatolia and the Levant for quite some time before it was practiced in Europe, and it seems that the practice more or less spread from the middle east across Europe over a fairly long period of time.
Archaeologists have long asked the question: Was this a spread of agricultural people, or the spread of the practice of agriculture, or, even, the independent invention of agriculture by various groups independent of earlier manifestations of this practice elsewhere?
Sean Williams said,
September 1, 2009 at 12:01 pm
The Fertile Crescent, which goes from the Mesopotamian area around the Euphrates and Tigris to the Levant and (arguably) the Nile Delta, was where agriculture was developed. This led to the early formations of the cities of Sumer, known as the Cradle of Civilization. The Middle East as such is not the centre for the conception of agriculture, but the fact it spread to Egypt suggests the techniques, rather than the people, spread north-east into Europe.