But this doesn’t mark a point in time when everyone in the Middle East suddenly gave up hunting and gathering to instead cultivate crops and rear animals. Rather, it was the start of a long-drawn-out process. The first people to try to grow plants and breed docile animals probably weren’t motivated by the desire to produce more food: it was already available in abundance in the Fertile Crescent—hence the name—and the change in climate would have been a boon for foragers as well as farmers. Rather, farming likely began as a series of playful experiments or as a way to spend longer each year in
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