Since 1960 it has been known that villages preceded the discovery of agriculture. What Gordon Childe called the “Neolithic Revolution” took place gradually between 9000 and 7000 B.C. It is also known that, contrary to what was thought until quite recently, the cultivation of Graminaceae and the domestication of animals preceded the making of pottery. Agriculture properly speaking—that is, the cultivation of cereals—developed in Southwest Asia and Central America. “Vegeculture,” which depends upon the vegetative reproduction of tubers, roots, or rhizomes, seems to have originated in the humid
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