The archaeological evidence for the origins and spreads of agriculture in the Eurasian, African and American continents.The early farming dispersal hypothesis in current perspective, plus operational considerations regarding the origins and dispersals of agriculture.Authored by a leading scholar with wide-ranging experience across the fields of anthropology and archaeology, First Farmers, Second Edition includes information on: The second edition has been thoroughly updated with many new maps and illustrations that reflect the multidisciplinary knowledge of the present day.

Founded on the author's insights from his research into the agricultural prehistory of East and Southeast Asia-one of the best focus areas for the teaching of prehistoric archaeology-this book offers an engaging account of how prehistoric humans settled new landscapes. Through twelve chapters, the text examines the latest evidence and leading theories surrounding the early development of agricultural practices through data drawn from across the anthropological discipline-primarily archaeology, comparative linguistics, and biological anthropology-to present a cohesive history of early farmer migration. It commences with the archaeological records from the multiple homelands of agriculture, and extends into discussions that draw on linguistic and genomic information about the human past, featuring new findings from the last ten years of research. This fully revised and updated second edition of First Farmers examines the origins of food production across the world and documents the expansions of agricultural populations from source regions during the past 12,000 years. A wide-ranging and accessible introduction to the origins and histories of the first agricultural populations in many different parts of the world

First Farmers by Peter Bellwood