Down on the Farm - Art Gallery of Alberta

The Alberta Foundation for the Arts Travelling Exhibition ProgramThe History of Agriculture - A Brief SurveyAgriculture has played a major role in human history, as agricultural progress has beena crucial factor in worldwide socio-economic change. As societies adopted farmingand were capable of producing food beyond the needs of their own families, this freedothers and allowed them to devote themselves to projects other than food production.Historians and anthropologists have long argued that the development of agriculturemade civilization possible.Agriculture was developed at least 10,000years ago. Evidence points to the FertileCrescent of the Middle East as the site ofthe earliest planned sowing and harvestingof plants that had previously been gatheredin the wild. Independent development ofagriculture is also believed to have occurredin northern and southern China, Africa’sSahel, New Guinea and several regions ofthe Americas.Map of the Fertile CrescentScholars have proposed a number oftheories to explain the historicaldevelopment of farming. Most likely, therewas a gradual transition from huntergathererto agricultural societies after alengthy period during which some cropswere deliberately planted and other foodswere gathered in the wild. It was not untilafter 9500 BC that the eight so-called founder cropsof agriculture appear: first emmer and einkornwheat, then hulled barley, peas, lentils, bitter vetch,chick peas and flax. These 8 crops occur more orless simultaneously on sites in the Levant, althoughthe consensus is that wheat was the first to begrown and harvested on a significant scale.By 7000 BC sowing and harvesting reachedMesopotamia and there, in the fertile soil just northof the Persian Gulf, Sumerians systematized it andscaled it up. By 6000 BC farming was entrenchedon the banks of the Nile River. About this timeagriculture was developed independently in the FarEast, probably in China, with rice rather than wheatas the primary crop. Maize was first domesticatedin the Americas around 3000-2700 BC. The potato,the tomato, the pepper, squash, several varieties ofbean, and several other plants were alsodeveloped in the New World.Tomb of Nakht, EgyptEighteenth DynastyAFA Travelling Exhibition Program, Edmonton, AB. Ph: 780.428.3830 Fax: 780.421.0479youraga.ca