First Farmers The Origins of Agricultural Societies

A wide-ranging and accessible introduction to the origins and histories of the first agricultural populations in many different parts of the world

This fully revised and updated second edition of First Farmers examines the origins of food production across the world and documents the expansions of agricultural populations from source regions during the past 12,000 years. It commences with the archaeological records from the multiple homelands of agriculture, and extends into discussions that draw on linguistic and genomic information about the human past, featuring new findings from the last ten years of research.

Through twelve chapters, the text examines the latest evidence and leading theories surrounding the early development of agricultural practices through data drawn from across the anthropological discipline—primarily archaeology, comparative linguistics, and biological anthropology—to present a cohesive history of early farmer migration. Founded on the author's insights from his research into the agricultural prehistory of East and Southeast Asia—one of the best focus areas for the teaching of prehistoric archaeology—this book offers an engaging account of how prehistoric humans settled new landscapes.

The second edition has been thoroughly updated with many new maps and illustrations that reflect the multidisciplinary knowledge of the present day. Authored by a leading scholar with wide-ranging experience across the fields of anthropology and archaeology, First Farmers, Second Edition includes information on:

• The early farming dispersal hypothesis in current perspective, plus operational considerations regarding the origins and dispersals of agriculture
• The archaeological evidence for the origins and spreads of agriculture in the Eurasian, African and American continents
• The histories of the language families that spread with the first farming populations, and the evidence from biological anthropology and ancient DNA that underpins our modern knowledge of these migrations

Drawing evidence from across the sub-disciplines of anthropology to present a cohesive and exciting analysis of an important subject in the study of human population history, Farmers First, Second Edition is an important work of scholarship and an excellent introduction to multiple methods of anthropological and archaeological inquiry for the beginner student in prehistoric anthropology and archaeology, human migration, archaeology of East and Southeast Asia, agricultural history, comparative anthropology, and more disciplines across the anthropology curriculum.

PETER BELLWOOD is Emeritus Professor at the Australian National University in Canberra, a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy, and winner of the International Cosmos Prize for 2021. He is the author of dozens of books and papers on topics spanning the field of archaeology, focusing on prehistoric population migration, prehistory of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, and interdisciplinary connections between archaeology, linguistics, and human biology. In addition to First Farmers, he has published two other introductions to anthropology and archaeology with Wiley Blackwell: First Migrants (2013) and First Islanders (2017).

List of Figures xii

Preface to the first edition of First Farmers (2005) xv

Preface to the second edition of First Farmers (2023) xix

1 The Early Farming Dispersal Hypothesis in Perspective 1

Introducing the Hypothesis 1

The Disciplinary Players 4

Broad Perspectives 5

Some Thoughts on Causation and Approach 9

2 The Origins and Dispersals of Food Production 12

Matters of Definition 12

What Changed with Food Production? 14

The Significance of Agriculture: Productivity and

Population Numbers 15

What Were the Practicalities behind Plant Domestication? 20

Forager versus Farmer: An Easy Behavioral Choice? 22

Why Did Food Production Develop in the First Place? 25

Were There Any Regularities in the Origins of Food Production across the World? 27

Focusing on the Holocene as an Essential Environmental Background for Food Production 30

Agricultural Adoption: The View from Ethnography 32

The “Encapsulated” Hunter-Gatherers of Africa and Asia 34

The Independent Hunter-Gatherers of Australia, the Andamans, and the Americas 37

Hunter-Gatherers with Food-producing Ancestries 40

Why Did Ethnographic Hunter-Gatherers Not Become Food Producers? 40

To the Archaeological Record 42

A Final Observation 43

3 The Beginnings of Food Production in the Fertile Crescent 49

Introducing the Fertile Crescent 49

The Fertile Crescent Environment at the Dawn of Agriculture 52

The Domestication of Plants in the Fertile Crescent 53

The Fertile Crescent Domesticated Animals 56

The Hunter-Gatherer Background to Farming in the Fertile Crescent 58

The Fertile Crescent Neolithic: The Rise of Villages, Towns, and Food Production 61

The Pre-Pottery Neolithic A and Its Contemporaries (c. 9500–8500 BCE) 65

The Pre-Pottery Neolithic B and Its Contemporaries (c. 8500–7000 BCE) 68

Further Observations on the PPNB World 70

The Pre-Pottery Neolithic on the Move: The Zagros, Central Anatolia, and Cyprus 71

The Real Turning Point in the Neolithic Revolution 75

4 The Spreads of Food Production beyond the Fertile Crescent: Europe, the Middle East, and South Asia 81

The Spread of the Neolithic Economy through Europe 81

Western Anatolia 84

The Aegean, Greece, and the Northern Mediterranean Littoral 86

The Balkans, and the Danubians of the Linearbandkeramik (LBK) 87

Northern Europe 90

The British Isles 91

The Western Steppes: The Lower Danube to the Urals 92

European Neolithic Societies 93

Agricultural Dispersals to the East of the Fertile Crescent 94

The Indian Subcontinent (South Asia) 97

The Domesticated Crops of the Indian Subcontinent 97

Regional Trajectories into Food Production in South Asia:

The Consequences of Mehrgarh 98

Western India: Extending beyond the Harappan 100

Southern India 101

The Ganges Basin and Northeast India 102

Europe and South Asia Compared 104

5 Africa: Multiple Routes into Food Production 109

Three African Themes 109

The African Continent 110

Before Farming: The Green Sahara 112

The Spread of the Fertile Crescent Agricultural Complex into Egypt 113

The North African Littoral 116

Pastoralism before Crop Agriculture in Northeastern Africa? 116

The Origins of the African Domesticated Plants 118

The Appearance of Agriculture in Central and Southern Africa 120

A Summary for Africa 123

6 The Beginnings of Agriculture in East Asia 127

The Environmental Background to Early Agriculture in East Asia 127

The Domesticated Plants and Animals of East Asia 129

The Cultural Background to Early Agriculture in East Asia 130

Where and How the Millets and Rice Became Domesticated 131

Agriculture and Migration in China 134

The Archaeological Record of the Early Neolithic in the Liao and Yellow River Basins 136

The Archaeological Record of the Early Neolithic in the Yangtze Basin 140

Demographic Trends in Neolithic China 142

Later Developments (Post-5000 BCE) in the Chinese Neolithic 142

7 The Dispersals of Food Producers into Southeast Asia and Oceania 150

The Hunter-Gatherer Background to the Arrival of Farmers in Mainland Southeast Asia 152

The Oldest Neolithic Assemblages in Guangxi and Northern Vietnam 155

First Farmers across Mainland Southeast Asia 157

Early Farmers in Taiwan and Island Southeast Asia 161

The Archaeological Record of Food Production in Island Southeast Asia 164

The New Guinea Agricultural Trajectory and Its Role in Pacific Colonization 167

Early Farmers as First Settlers in Remote Oceania 169

8 Early Agriculture in the Americas 176

Some Necessary Background to Early American Food Production 178

The Geography of Early Agriculture in the Americas 181

Maize 182

Other Important Crops 184

South America: The Andes 186

Amazonia 191

Middle America (with Mesoamerica) 193

The Southwest USA 196

Of Pipelines and Freeways 198

Immigrant Mesoamerican Farmers in the US Southwest? 201

Independent Agricultural Origins in the Eastern Woodlands 202

9 What Do Language Families Mean for Human Prehistory? 212

Language Families, and How They Have Evolved 213

Text Box; The Austronesian languages and their speakers 214

The Identification and Phylogenetic Study of Language Families 217

Of Trees and Rakes 220

At What Rates Do Languages Change through Time? 222

Missing Links? 225

How Did Languages and Language Families Spread? 227

Languages in Competition: Language Shift 229

Where to Next? 231

10 The Profound Impact of the Fertile Crescent 235

Where Did the Indo-European Family Originate, and When? 235

A Pontic Steppes Origin for the Indo-European Languages? 241

Elamite and Dravidian, and the Indo-Iranians 244

The Afro-Asiatic Language Family 248

The Background to a Genetic Perspective 250

Genomic Evidence for Neolithic Migration Out of the Fertile Crescent 252

Indo-European from the Pontic Steppes? The Genetic Perspective 253

Fertile Crescent DNA Heads East 255

A New Genetic Perspective on Indo-European Origins? 260

Genomic Ancestry and the Afro-Asiatic Language Family 261

11 Asia, Oceania, Africa, The Americas 268

The East Asian Language Families 268

Sino-Tibetan 270

Transeurasian 271

The Mainland Southeast Asian Language Families 273

Austroasiatic 274

Kra-Dai (Tai-Kadai) and Hmong-Mien 275

Island Southeast Asia and Oceania – Austronesian 276

Genomic Perspectives on Early Farmer and Language Family Dispersals in Southern China, Southeast Asia, and Oceania 278

Whence the Polynesians and Micronesians? 278

Was Taiwan a Likely Genomic Homeland for Austronesian-speaking Populations? 280

Which Neolithic Populations in China Contributed Genes to Southeast Asian and Pacific Populations? 281

Oceania: The Trans-New Guinea Family 284

The African Language Families 285

The Nilo-Saharan Family and the Khoisan Language Group 286

The Niger-Congo Family, with Its Bantu Subgroup 288

The Americas 291

Middle America, Mesoamerica, and the US Southwest 293

Uto-Aztecan 296

South America 298

Eastern North America 302

12 The Early Farming Dispersal Hypothesis: Two Decades Later 316

Index 319

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