Technology Necessary for Agriculture
Surprisingly, this dramatically new way of life
was not very dependent on new technology. On the contrary, in the earliest
phase of development, pioneer farmers used techniques and tools which had
long been familiar to hunter-gatherers: the stone axe, hoe, and sickle (left)
for preparation of the fields and harvesting the grain. The primitive milling
device for grinding seeds between two stones (the "quern," below)
to process the grain into edible form had been in use for thousands of years
by peoples who collected seeds but did not plant them.
Profound cultural rather than technological changes were
necessary at first to permit adaptation to the new mode of life. But once
the shift had occurred, ever more changes, both cultural and technological,
became possible.