History pt 6: The spread of Agriculture

 Let's start 11,000 years ago in what is now Iraq, Syria and Turkiye, in these countries, was barley, grown in damp soil, and began domesticating animals. Sheep, goats, cows and pigs, in all the areas we are going to learn about, agriculture was being developed independently and people invented it on their own. 

9,000 BCE - 7,000 BCE is when archaeologists had on agriculture, then we move to modern-day Sudan near the southeastern Sahara desert, and what was growing there was sorghum, which is commonly known for what is now animal feed.  

Then on the west side of Africa, what is now modern-day Nigeria, 1000 years later. People started growing: okra or ladies' finger, yams, and black-eye peas. You might notice that these are used in very traditional and cultural foods. So 8000 - 6000 BCE is when these crops started.

Now let's go to Asia, starting from 6500 BCE people living around the Yangtze River, started farming rice, or paddy and domesticated pigs buffalo, and chicken, and now we go north, and in 5500 BCE they started cultivating millet and soybeans.

Then in 3000 BCE in Southeast Asia, those people grew taro, which is a root vegetable, that has a very strong starchy flavour, along with other plants like: yam, coconuts, bananas and citrus. 
The thing that relates to all of these plants is that they are all high-calorie foods. Which was necessary as you needed high amounts of calories.
We believe that they had to study roughly what plants to grow for the highest profit or "The biggest bang for your buck", where they are doing what is now called Min-maxing, where they put in the minimum level of resources for the maximum possible profit.

Let's now go to Peru and the Andes mountains, after 3000 BCE, they started growing potatoes. (the Irish, although famous for potatoes, did not start having potatoes until Sir Walter Raleigh imported them in 1589). 
They domesticated: llamas, alpacas, and guinea pigs. And since guinea pigs were domesticated the Quechua people would eat them as a food source, and people now in Peru still eat them.