Agricultural Revolution Essay

So many agricultural revolution essays are already written that sometimes you just do not know what to choose to read and feel lost. We will try to help you. This essay differs from other essays on agriculture, because here we have made an attempt to make the meaning of the agricultural revolution as clear as possible. Enjoy the reading!

Agriculture

Agriculture (accommodation geography) is the second leading sector of material production. It includes crops and animal breeding. In the world about 1,1 billion people work at this field.

Agricultural revolution

Agricultural revolution is a term used in science to determine the period of changes in agricultural production.

The transition from gathering and hunting to agriculture started in the moment when people started to sow the seeds in the mountainous areas around Mesopotamia. It happened about 10 thousands years ago during the New Stone Age. The agricultural revolution was in fact technological revolution, due to which people became civilized.

Agricultural revolution was an epoch-making event outside the normal technological development. She gave birth to almost all of the factors necessary for the further development of mankind. Development of the tools from stone to iron through bronze or informational development from writing to electronic memory devices through paper and printing – all this is nothing comparing with the agricultural revolution. Of course, tools and informational progress are compatible with the agricultural revolution. But it should be mentioned that the value of the agricultural revolution will be underestimated if it is considered at the same level as development of the tools and various means of information.

The agricultural revolution, as well as the industrial revolution, provoked significant socioeconomic changes during the human history. These two revolutions can be correlated with the development of tools and information, but the first one produced a much greater effect. It is well seen when we study the features of three stages of history: the era of hunting and gathering, agricultural era and the industrial age.

The most essential feature of the agricultural revolution was artificial circulation mechanisms to produce the basic needs items. These mechanisms allowed people not only to consume agricultural products, but also to keep a great amount of seeds for future production. So the emergence of agriculture can be regarded as the emergence of a new type of work implying periodicity, due to which people have made an irreversible leap from the animal status. The agricultural revolution improved the language, art, moral values. It also caused more systematical use of fire, tools, agricultural experience, and food distribution.

Languages and tools were available even in the Old Stone Age, but the agricultural revolution raised them to a new level of quality, from which people began their long way of their own culture creation. The agricultural revolution required deep understanding of life processes and growth, and it was possible only through the accumulation of past experience. When people got language, they became creatures that differ from animals absolutely dependent on natural environment. And, finally, the agricultural revolution established human subjectivity.

With the help of the agricultural revolution people got everything they needed to become cultural creatures. Breeding crops required various knowledge of astronomy and astrology that leaded to the birth of the primitive mathematics. Like the instruments of labor, the most essential feature of the human language was its frequency. The agricultural revolution caused much success on the way of the language development allowing people to reach cultural level. This frequency did not have that much value in the period of hunting and gathering.

Some people claim that the Neolithic stone tools provoked the agricultural revolution. However, the agricultural revolution could happen without stone tools; the fact that some areas remained on the stage of hunting and gathering even when they got the iron tools proved it. Considering Neolithic tools as a background for the agricultural revolution, we come too close to the historical point of view, based on tools development that is superficial interpretation of human history, supported by archeological evidence of Stone Age.

The appearing of the language facilitated the development of communication means: writing. paper and printing methods. However, the development of communication means had less importance than the emergence of language. Ivan Pavlov (1849 – 1936) used to say that language was the second signal system. Due to this second signal system people were separated from nature. Although, the communication means development has played an important role in human history, the language initiated this development.

The agricultural and industrial revolution

With the change in cooking technology a man moved from appropriating economy to producing. It was the beginning of human separation from nature. The use of the gifts of nature later turned into legalized looting.

The first centers of agriculture emerged in the following areas of the globe: in the Middle East, Egypt, India and China. The agricultural revolution was a turning point in human evolution. Now human needed only 1 hectare of land (not 500 hectare as human gatherer needed), and he became able to feed not only himself, but also his family. The agriculture required to create new tools, methods of products processing, utensils for storage of crops and seeds. It made the man settled. And, as a result, the division of labor, exchange of products of labor and trade appeared. The places for change became the prototypes of the cities. There were special men who were responsible for the rules of change, settlement of the disputes, producer’s protection; they were officials and soldiers, i.e. the authority. In such a way the civilization was forming, and along with it human attitude to nature was changing as well. The man gradually began to think that he was the master of nature. The rate of agricultural technologies spread gradually grew. In the first millennium, these technologies occupied Europe and Asia, and after the Great Geographical Discoveries, which began with the discoveries of new continents by the Europeans, the technologies spread all over the world. Since the 16th century people began to write treatises on agriculture, develop ways of fertilizers and soil reclamation, later agricultural equipment on the horse drawn were created. There was an active change of cultural plants between the continents: in Europe and Asia potatoes, tomatoes, corn from America became widespread, in the countries of America – wheat, oats, barley and so on.

The discovering of new areas by the Europeans provoked the progress of science and technology. The first steam engine was invented. The man began to use fossil fuels, coal, to produce energy. The beginning of the Industrial Revolution is considered to be 1830 – the time when the building of the first railway network in Great Britain was finished. The world gradually turned to the industrial production. Mass production of products with the participation of a large number of people developed in large enterprises. If the agricultural technology needed several thousand years to spread all over the world, the industrial technology made it in 150 years only. There are almost no countries in the world that do not have factories and power plants, where no railways or highways, and especially there are no countries where the army and police is not equipped with modern firearms.

Today world is in the era of information technology development that became global in only 20 years. There is a destruction of the wild flora and fauna in the field of agricultural development, but the man partially replaces them with cultural plants and pets. In the areas of industry development wild nature is destroyed, and roads, aerodromes etc. are built.

Truly grand human activity, conquest of the entire land surface, bowels of the Earth and World Ocean, and eventually penetration into space provoked human belief in unlimited possibilities of the science and technology, in human ability to solve any problem. As a result, the gods were sent to the heaven for good and all, and on the land their place was taken by other god – science and technology.

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