single crops sometimes led to malnutrition and
even famine when these crops failed. Crowded
living conditions and close contact with animals
in Neolithic villages promoted the spread of in-
fectious disease. And as this embroidery shows,
food production involves considerable labor. This
artwork also demonstrates that the innovations
from one part of the world disseminated glob-
ally. While the traditional Hmong homeland is in
Southeast Asia, the pumpkins and corn depicted
here are crops that were originally domesticated
in the Americas. The development of permanent
settlements and the domestication of animals
and plants introduced new beliefs, daily routines,
social relationships, and political structures that
together continue to challenge humans globally.Challenge Issue This embroidery by Hmong
artist Pangxiong Sirathasuk depicts not only her
culture’s story of the origins of farming—a way of
life that first began as early as 10,000 years ago—
but also some of the consequences of this shift
from food foraging to food production. According
to Hmong folklore, the vegetables started out
walking into villages. But they became disgusted
with human greed and walked back to the fields,
stating that humans in the future would have
to work very hard to receive the earth’s bounty.
Farming and the domestication of animals, along
with settlement, mark the start of the Neolithic
period. These cultural innovations solved some
of the challenges of existence, but they also
created new ones. Diets limited by reliance on
© Tavid Bingham and Amory Ledyard