부산대학교 도서관

Nearly a century ago, G ordon Childe coined the expression “Neolithic Revolution” to account for the shift from a foraging to a farming lifestyle. If the social, cultural, economic and demographic implications of this change indeed had a profound and inalterable impact upon the fate of humanity, this process was by no means sudden, as the term Revolution would imply. On the contrary, the process of domestication of plants and animals took several millennia to be completed, from the earliest occurrences of domesticates by c. 8500-8000 cal. BC in the Fertile Crescent, to the general presence of farming practices by 7000 cal. BC across the Levant. Likewise, the very process of crop domestication can take up to several millennia to be fully completed.