The Agricultural Revolution

Around twelve thousand years ago, in the arc of well-watered land curving up from the Persian Gulf — the Fertile Crescent — people began planting wheat and barley and penning animals instead of chasing them. In some ways it was a worse deal: the first farmers were shorter, sicker, and worked longer hours than the foragers they replaced. But farming produced storable surplus, and surplus is the seed of everything that follows — cities, kings, writing, war. It is the first time a technology remade what human work even is, faster than any society could adapt.