Environmental Impacts of the Rise of Agriculture

An event as important as the Neolithic Revolution (Bar Yosef, 1998) is one that most certainly leaves a mark. This mark can still be seen today, as the food system many modern human populations rely on continues to revolve around agriculture. The event has been so pivotal, progressivists argue, that it has allowed early human populations to spend less time hunting and gathering, and more time innovating (Diamond, 1987). Were it not for the Neolithic Revolution, would I still be blogging here today? 

An event so monumental for human populations must also have had impacts on the surrounding biotic communities. Zeder (2008) examined the environmental impacts of Neolithic economies in the Mediterranean Basin, which were most important in the large islands of the region. In these locations, domesticated and wild mainland fauna replaced endemic fauna. In Cyprus, for instance, only five endemic species existed before the arrival of humans, namely the pigmy hippopotamus, the pygmy elephant, the genet, and a mouse (Smithsonian Institution, 2013), all of which are now extinct. Zeder (2008) argues that despite the role of humans in the extirpation of endemic island fauna still being unclear due to a lack of definitive evidence, the progressive east-to-west disappearance of these mammals occurring around the time of human colonisation suggests that humans did play a significant role.

Pygmy hippopotamus skull ca. 10,000–8,500 BCE from Aetokremmos
(Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History)

The environmental impacts of the rise of agriculture have also been studied in the other major centres of domestication. Zhou et al., (2011), for example, have shown that an agricultural transition occurred in the Longdong area of China during the Neolithic period. This transition was marked by a shift in early agriculture from producing common millet exclusively to producing other grains including foxtail millet, rice, and soybeans in addition to the common millet. Agricultural civilisations grew rapidly during this period and this expansion altered the Longdong basin ecosystem. Pollen analysis revealed that the predominant effects of the intensification of agriculture in the region were the degradation and simplification of local shrub-grasslands and the expansion of Graminaceae farmlands. Following the abandonment of settlements and agriculture in this location, the ecosystem recovered.

The studies described above are only two of the many examples of the environmental impacts of early agriculture. They highlight that even the earliest agricultural civilisations managed to alter the natural environment, just as we do today albeit at a much larger scale.