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
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).
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