Prior to the agricultural revolution (10,000-12,000 years ago), hunting and gathering was the worldwide way of life for our species. It maintained humans in a variety of conditions for 200,000 years—95 percent of human history. Why did our forefathers quit their ancient way of life to seek agriculture?

For a long time, experts, including Charles Darwin, felt that primitive people established agriculture by coincidence, and that once the secret was learned, the move to agriculture was unavoidable. However, this is only possible if we assume that (i) the most significant barrier to the adoption of agriculture was a lack of knowledge about plant life cycles and propagation, and (ii) farming was easier than hunting and gathering from the start. These theories cannot be explicitly verified or refuted.

Scholars' interest in modern hunters and gatherers was reignited with the 1966 Man the Hunter conference in Chicago, organised by Irven DeVore and Richard Lee. Richard Lee, a PhD student studying under DeVore, had lived in Botswana with the!Kung, one of the Kalahari Desert's San (Bushman) clans, for three years (1963-1965). He commented on his experience at the conference, saying that!Kung males hunt and!Kung women congregate. "Although hunting requires a great deal of effort and prestige," he continues, "plant foods provide 60-80 percent of the annual diet by weight." Meat has become seen as a special delicacy; when accessible, it is welcomed as a change from the monotony of veggie dishes, but it is never relied upon.

TIME LINES

1. 9500 BCE (The first evidence of domesticated wheat)
2. 8000 BCE (Cattle herding evidence)
3. 7000 BCE (Barley cultivation; domestication of animals)
4. 6500 BCE (Turkish cattle domestication)
5. 6000 BCE (The Indus Valley crops everything from wheat to cotton and sugar).
6. 5500 BCE (the Sumerians begin to organise agriculture)
7. 5400 BCE (Archaeological proof of chicken domestication)
8. 5400 BCE (European Linearbandkeramik Culture)
9. 5000 BCE (Africans cultivate rice and sorghum)
10. 4000 BCE (The first ploughs arise in Mesopotamia)
11. 3000 BCE (Americas domesticate maize)
12. 3000 BCE (Indus Valley harvests turmeric).
13. 2737 BCE Tea has been found.
14. 2000 BCE The first windmill in Babylon
Sugar processing in India around 1000 BCE
16. 500 BCE Row cultivation is practised

Agriculture in the British Colonial Period (1757-1947 CE)
1. During the British Raj in India, few Indian economic crops, such as cotton, indigo, opium, and rice, made it to the world market.
2. Land under cultivation increased little in the second part of the nineteenth century, and agricultural production increased at a pace of around 1% per year by the late nineteenth century.
3. As a result of significant irrigation via canal networks, Punjab, Narmada Valley, and Andhra Pradesh became agricultural reform hotspots.
4. Agricultural output was dismal throughout the interwar years (1918-1939).
5. From 1891 through 1946, the yearly growth rate of all crop output was 0.4 percent, while food-grain output remained virtually unchanged. There were considerable regional and intercrop variances, with nonfood crops doing the best.