plows to churn up the soil; plows could dig much deeper than
hand tools. Th e fi rst plows were pulled by humans; aft er about
6000 b.c.e. people began using oxen to pull plows. Farmers
harvested their crops with sickles made of stone. Th ey stored
seeds and dried beans in containers made of baked clay. In
order to eat grain, people had to grind it into meal or fl our,
which could be made into fl at bread. Grinding wheat was ex-
tremely laborious work, done entirely by women. Th ey used a
device called a quern, a primitive mill made of a fl at piece of
stone. Th ey would place a handful of wheat on the quern and
crush it with another stone.
DOMESTICATING ANIMALS
Long before they began domesticating animals, humans had
contact with wild animals that they hunted and trapped for
meat and leather. Sheep and goats in particular were abun-
dant in the region, and both of them are known to have been
domesticated in the Fertile Crescent by around 8000 b.c.e.
Pigs and cattle followed suit about 2,000 years later, around
6000 b.c.e. In choosing animals to domesticate, people ob-
served the habits of the mammals that shared their environ-
ment. Th ey noticed which animals were incurably dangerous
or bad-tempered. Th ey also noticed which animals had a
dominance structure that could be manipulated. Dogs, hors-
es, pigs, and sheep all follow leaders and care about their rank
within their group. Humans substituted themselves for ani-
mal leaders and, aft er several generations of selective breed-
ing, soon had domesticated animals.
Sheep and goats became the fi rst domestic animals,
because they share several characteristics not held by other
local large mammals that were equally populous, such as
gazelles or onagers. Sheep and goats are fast growing and
easily fed on local vegetation. Th ey are herd animals that
imprint on leaders, meaning that an entire group of animals
will imitate the actions of the animal they accept as their
leader. In this way they could be trained to follow humans.
Th ey do not mind living in crowded conditions with limited
mobility. Th ey are relatively easy to tame. Humans began
taking over herds as their own, persuading the animals that
they were their leaders, herding them to and from pastures,
and manipulating the populations to maximize human in-
terests. Th ey had already been following herds for millen-
nia, going up and down mountains with goats and sheep,
so they knew a great deal about herd behavior. Once they
had taken possession of the herds, people furthered their
advantage with selective techniques. Th ey killed off aggres-
sive animals or poor milkers and allowed the animals with
more desirable traits to live and breed.
Archaeologists know that animals were domesticated be-
tween 8000 and 6000 b.c.e. Th e numbers of sheep and goat
bones have been found to increase dramatically in more re-
cent layers at archaeological digs. Domesticated animals of
this period are smaller than their wild counterparts, partly
because people eliminated the larger and more aggressive
males and partly because the beasts did not eat as much as
they did in the wild. Another reason for the smaller size of
bones is that domestic herds contain many more females than
males; herders wanted animals that could produce milk and
young and that were less likely to attack them, so they kept
females and slaughtered young males. Sheep were domesti-
cated primarily in the area that is now Lebanon, southeastern
Turkey, northwestern Syria, and southwestern Iran. Sheep
needed good pastures and hilly grasslands to survive, so they
did not thrive in other parts of the Fertile Crescent. Goats, on
the other hand, are not as particular, and were domesticated
throughout the Near East.
Another domestic animal that soon became common was
the pig. Wild pigs ranged throughout the region. Although
pigs do not live in herds, they have a dominance structure that
allows humans to take control of them. Th ey eat anything,
grow quickly, and produce large litters frequently. Pig bones
from about 8,000 years ago show the same decrease in size
seen with sheep and goats, indicating that they were under
human management. It appears that pigs were domesticated
in the central part of the Fertile Crescent, modern Lebanon,
Syria, and eastern Turkey and spread to other parts of the re-
gion already domesticated. Th ey never became as common
as sheep or goats. Cattle also appear in the archaeological re-
cord. Th ese cattle were bred from the large and dangerous
aurochs, wild cattle that roamed the region and had been
hunted for thousands of years. Smaller cattle bones appear in
the Fertile Crescent about 6000 to 5000 b.c.e.SOCIETAL CHANGES FOLLOWING THE
INTRODUCTION OF AGRICULTURE
Once humans had learned the basics of agriculture and ani-
mal husbandry, their lives changed dramatically. Domes-
ticating plants and animals allowed humans to feed more
people with available resources. Farmers could feed between
ten and 100 times more people than hunter-gatherers could
do with the same amount of land. Th is was because they
had concentrated edible plants in the available space, re-
moving all competing plants that would decrease the avail-
able food. Livestock could make land more productive by
adding manure to the soil to function as a natural fertilizer.
Domestic animals also supplied people with milk and eggs
and meat, and they helped humans cultivate larger plots of
land by pulling plows. When animals were no longer useful
for labor or the production of milk and eggs, people used
their bodies, eating all the edible portions and using every-
thing else for nonfood items, such as leather and bone tools.
Agriculture and livestock furnished the raw material for
cloth as well.
Growing crops forced people to stay in one place. Hunt-
er-gatherers typically moved around frequently, and they had
to be able to carry all their possessions with them every time
they moved. In particular, mothers had to carry their young
children. As a result, hunter-gatherer mothers could have
only one baby every four years or so, spacing their births so
that they never had to carry more than one child at a time.26 agriculture: The Middle East