TIME

Agricultural Revolution

≈ 12,000 years ago

Illustration of early farmers harvesting ripe wheat and barley by hand with flint-edged sickles at sunrise, with a woven basket of grain in the foreground and a village of round thatched huts behind them.

Early HumanityAgricultural Revolution

Humans begin to farm.

People in several regions began to grow plants and keep animals. Farming gradually changed how people lived and how complex societies grew.

Wheat and barley were cultivated in the Fertile Crescent, and farming arose independently in China and Mesoamerica.

12,000 years ago, placed on the scale of its era on a line leading toward now.

Era
Early Humanity
Period
≈ 12,000 years ago
Edition
1/1
Status
Not Released
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Background artwork

An original illustration generated for TIME with an AI image model, 2026. An artistic reconstruction of an early farming village in the Fertile Crescent. The people, tools and buildings are an interpretation.