The Development of Agriculture in Mesopotamia and the Comparison to Essay

The Development of Agriculture in Mesopotamia and the Comparison to Other Agricultural Hearths - Essay Example Still, Mesopotamian influences, along with those of China, provided the structure through which the agriculture of India was developed. The rise of agriculture in Mesoamerica was developed through an independent set of inventions. It is clearly, however, Mesopotamia that has the earliest development of agriculture in the world. The primary reasons for the Fertile Crescent to be the first to develope agriculture were due to time, environment, and increased populations that formed city-states. In discussing the nature of the development of agriculture in the Fertile Crescent, it is important to understand the way in which time is a factor in producing commodities for a civilization. In order to feed the people of the region, hunting gathering would have been the first form of communal food resourcing that would have been attempted. Because of the nature of the geography of the area, this was not an efficient system for gathering food and creating enough nourishment for the people. As m ore people gathered in concentric areas, it became clear that a different method of food production would be needed to satisfy the needs of so many people that had become a growing population. The problem in the geography was that the areas were mostly mountainous, covered with vast forests and brushwood.1 It was a better choice to create resources of food in more central areas, farms that could feed people rather than requiring them to go out into the world to find their food. The time required to hunt and gather was inefficient. Time is also relevant in relationship to the climate, the rains of the region more frequent and in a better balance for agriculture than they currently are for the area. It is likely, according to climatology history, that between the Ice Age and about 4000BCE the monsoon rains extended farther West, providing for a more moisture rich environment than currently exists.2 The environment was more conducive to planting, the land more rich in nutrients and the way in which growing needs were met. The world has changed a great deal and the answers to the reasons for questions of history often lie in greater conveniences available during those times in contrast to the way in which circumstances exist presently. Time period is relevant to the developments that existed as the collision of fertile circumstances provide for opportunities to develop. As the rains created a rich environment, the development of harnessing the rain through irrigation increased the level of farming that could be accomplished. The other way in which time is relevant is through the time it took for the agricultural culture to develop. Agriculture did not spring up during a period of a few hundred years. The development of agriculture was reflective of a period of more than a thousand years, the development emerging through a long period of time where single farmers moved to villages, which moved to towns, then moving and arranging themselves into city-states. This to ok a millennia of time for the processes of agriculture to begin to develop, the populations put into place, and solutions to the problems of resource allocation to be focused on growing and