In the first half of the twentieth century, the Neolithic Revolution was interpreted by Gordon Childe and his followers as a bettering of the human condition, which brought obvious benefits: stored food with which to survive famines; new forms of nutrition close at hand, such as milk and eggs; less need for exhausting, dangerous and often fruitless treks through the wilderness; work that the unfit and injured could still do; perhaps more spare time in which to invent civilisation.
