Farming, as we can now see, often started out as an economy of deprivation: you only invented it when there was nothing else to be done, which is why it tended to happen first in areas where wild resources were thinnest on the ground. It was the odd one out in the strategies of the Early Holocene, but it had explosive growth potential, especially after domestic livestock were added to cereal crops. Even so, it was the new kid on the block.
