Recovering Policy Autonomy and Moving towards Egalitarian and Green Growth

From the Neolithic to the Urban Revolutions

Roughly 13,000 years ago, mankind discovered how to domesticate wild plants and animals for its own use, as sources of food, shelter, transport and tools. Cattle, sheep, goats, camels and horses were used as sources of milk, meat, wool, clothing and shelter, and for carrying people over distances that they could not cover quickly on foot. Some groups of people became specialised as shepherds and pastoralists, and some became specialised as sedentary or periodically moving farmers – those who practiced swidden or jhumia cultivation. Some groups combined both kinds of activities. Gender specialisation in terms of subsistence may also have taken place, with men clearing the ground for agriculture and women tending the plots. It is this change that the great archaeologist, Gordon Childe, called the Neolithic revolution (Childe 1936, 1942). It was called Neolithic because while most of the tools used were made of stone rather than metal, they were carefully turned, often sharper and smoother than the kinds of tools humankind had used earlier.