Neolithic Expansion

At the end of the last ice age, about 12,000 years ago, humanity entered a period of increasing technological sophistication. For reasons that are still disputed, many of the large mammals hunted by humans became extinct, driving the development of new food sources: breadmaking considerably predates this period, but people in Mesopotamia now began cultivating wild cereal and pulses. Dogs had been domesticated over thousands of years; nomadic shepherding became possible through domestication of goats, sheep, horses, camels and cattle.

About 7,000 years ago, livestock herding was sufficiently established to allow a widespread abandonment of hunter-gathering in favour of settled lifestyles. Pottery was increasingly useful, and permanent buildings, constructed from mudbrick, appeared. These technologies spread out of the Middle East through the Old World. With the arrival of bronze, stone was used less for tools and weapons and more for buildings and statues or monuments.

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