6.1 Introduction

It is said that there have been six major “revolutions” in the history of mankind, namely, human, agricultural, urban, spiritual, scientific and presently environmental. This account has reached the second and the first glimmerings of the third.

During the last glacial maximum people were forced to congregate around major rivers as the climate became much drier, causing deserts and tundra to spread over many inland areas. When it became warmer at the end of the glacial period there was generally more rain and more food, leading to an increase in population. These early concentrations of people formed a focus for development leading to more sedentary communities, people working cooperatively and developing rituals to reinforce group identity.

The transition from hunter/gatherer to farmer irrevocably changed human society, but it occurred slowly and independently in a handful of areas of the world. It was always based on a few indigenous plants and animals, and usually once man had become fairly sedentary. Even today almost all the world’s population depends for food on a relatively small range of crops and domestic animals. There were six main regions of the World that exhibited relatively early and sustained development of agriculture and animal husbandry. In addition to the Fertile Crescent of South West Asia and the Yangtse and Yellow River Valleys in China, there were the Coastal region of South East Asia, the Indus Valley in India, the Peruvian Andes in America and the Niger Valley in Africa. The sustenance of other regions mainly became based on small-scale farming to supplement hunting and gathering.

Ancient River Civilisations

As with agriculture, ceramic pottery was discovered independently in different parts of the world, at different times in the past. Unsurprisingly, there is good correlation with the areas at the forefront of agriculture, indicating that agriculture and pottery were often developed together, usually to satisfy the need for containers for cooking and storing food. The areas of relatively early pottery development included East Asia (China and Japan), South West Asia and India.