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.
Tell Aswad
Understanding of the role of Tell Aswad in the beginnings of farming has been complicated by changes in dating. Originally it was thought to be an example of one of the oldest sites of agriculture with domesticated emmer wheat dated by Willem van Zeist and his assistant Johanna Bakker-Heeres to the PPNA at 7600-7300 uncal BC (about 9000 cal BC). The claim is based on the discovery of enlarged grains, absences of wild grains and on the presumption that the site was beyond the usual habitat of the wild variety of emmer wheat. Flax seeds were present, and fruit, figs and pistachios, were found in large quantities. Stationary containers of mud and stone were found with carbonized grain found on the interior of one designating them as silos. Finally, reeds were widely used, especially as reinforcement in the architecture, but also for mats and baskets and perhaps as bedding or fodder. Despite the (apparently) early date of domesticated plants, Jacques Cauvin considered that Aswad was not the center for the origin of agriculture, stating that its first inhabitants "arrived, perhaps from the neighboring Anti-Lebanon, already equipped with the seeds for planting, for their practice of agriculture from the inception of the settlement is not in doubt. Thus it was not in the oasis itself that they carried out their first experiments in farming."