Agrarian society
Agrarian society were preceded by hunter and gatherer and horticultural societies and transition into industrial society. The transition to agriculture, called the Neolithic Revolution, has taken place independently multiple times. Horticulture and agriculture as types of subsistence developed among humans somewhere between 10,000 and 8,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent region of the Middle East. The reasons for the development of agriculture are debated but may have included climate change, and the accumulation of food surplus for competitive gift-giving. Most certainly there was a gradual transition from hunter-gatherer to agricultural economies after a lengthy period when some crops were deliberately planted and other foods were gathered from the wild. In addition to the emergence of farming in the Fertile Crescent, agriculture appeared in: by at least 6,800 B.C.E. in East Asia (rice) and, later, in Central and South America (maize and squash). Small-scale agriculture also likely arose independently in early Neolithic contexts in India (rice) and Southeast Asia (taro). However, full dependency on domestic crops and animals, when wild resources contributed a nutritionally insignificant component to the diet, did not occur until the Bronze Age.
Fiona Marshall
Fiona Marshall works on Pastoral Neolithic sites in eastern Africa. Food production started in southwest Asia about 10,000 years ago, leading to higher populations, cities, and social stratification. This early food production may have led to the current distribution of wealth. The Neolithic in Africa, however, went differently. Instead of people becoming sedentary farmers, many peoples in Africa became mobile herders. But this pastoralism did not spread throughout all of Africa; it was more sporadic around the Sahara. Africa did eventually develop food production in farming, it was just later than the rest of the world at around 4000 BP. Marshall has examined the question of why ancient peoples domesticated wild plants and animals. Cattle were the first domesticates in North Africa around 10,000-8000 BP. The reason that cattle were so useful is because they allow pastoralists to adapt to changing climates. Even though pastoralism took root in Africa, Marshall points out that herding also contributed to the unequal spread of food. Pastoralism is also more labor-intensive and unpredictable than hunting-and-gathering, which is why Marshall believes that it was more patchy throughout Africa rather than taking it all over at once.