Evolutionary Psychology And Origens Of Religion (page 2)

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_religion

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neolithic_revolution

The Neolithic Revolution or Neolithic Demographic Transition, sometimes called the Agricultural Revolution, was the world's first historically verifiable revolution in agriculture. It was the wide-scale transition of many human cultures from a lifestyle of hunting and gathering to one of agriculture and settlement which supported an increasingly large population. [1] Archaeological data indicates that the domestication of various forms of plants and animals evolved in separate locations worldwide, starting in the geological epoch of the Holocene [2] around 12,00014 C years ago (10,000–5,000 BC). [3]

However, the Neolithic Revolution involved far more than the adoption of a limited set of food-producing techniques. During the next millennia it would transform the small and mobile groups of hunter-gatherers that had hitherto dominated human history into sedentary societies based in built-up villages and towns, which radically modified their natural environment by means of specialized food-crop cultivation (e.g., irrigation and food storage technologies) that allowed extensive surplus food production. These developments provided the basis for high population densitysettlements, specialized and complex labor diversification, trading economies, the development of non-portable art, architecture, and culture, centralized administrations and political structures, hierarchical ideologies, and depersonalized systems of knowledge (e.g., property regimesand writing). The first full-blown manifestation of the entire Neolithic complex is seen in the Middle Eastern Sumerian cities (ca. 5,500 BP), whose emergence also inaugurates the end of the prehistoric Neolithic period.

The relationship of the above-mentioned Neolithic characteristics to the onset of agriculture, their sequence of emergence, and empirical relation to each other at various Neolithic sites remains the subject of academic debate, and seems to vary from place to place, rather than being the outcome of universal laws of social evolution

Agriculture in China [edit]

Northern China appears to have been the domestication centre for foxtail millet (Setaria italica) and broomcorn millet (Panicum miliaceum) with evidence of domestication of these species approximately 8000 years ago. [34] These species were subsequently widely cultivated in the Yellow River basin (7500 years ago). [34] Rice was domesticated in southern China later on, [34] however, there may have been a separate domestication event for rice in India also

Technology [edit]

In his book Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond argues that Europeans and East Asians benefited from an advantageous geographical location that afforded them a head start in the Neolithic Revolution. Both shared the temperate climate ideal for the first agricultural settings, both were near a number of easily domesticable plant and animal species, and both were safer from attacks of other people than civilizations in the middle part of the Eurasian continent. Being among the first to adopt agriculture and sedentary lifestyles, and neighboring other early agricultural societies with whom they could compete and trade, both Europeans and East Asians were also among the first to benefit from technologies such as firearms and steel swords. In addition, they developed resistances to infectious disease, such as smallpox, due to their close relationship with domesticated animals. Groups of people who had not lived in proximity with other large mammals, such as the Australian Aborigines and American indigenous peoples, were more vulnerable to infection and largely wiped out by diseases.

During and after the Age of Discovery, European explorers, such as the Spanish conquistadors, encountered other groups of people who had never or only recently adopted agriculture, such as in the Pacific Islands, or lacked domesticated big mammals such as the people of the New Guinea Highlands.