Australia and the Origins of Agriculture

Introduction

The advent of agriculture as a particular form of food production, along with animal domestication, marks the beginning of an unparalleled transformation in human affairs. The transition that took place, from hunter-gatherers to agriculturalists, underpinned the evolution of a number of great civilizations. Usually the development of agriculture based on rye, wheat, and barley in western Asia, and rice and millet in China, is identified as the archetype for the development of the first pristine agriculturally based societies in human history. Over time extensive investigations in a range of disciplines have been conducted in an endeavor to understand the phenomenon, investigations which have attempted to answer such basic questions as when, where, and how did it happen, and perhaps most importantly, why did it happen at all? More recently, it has been realized that developments in hunter-gather societies were more varied and complex than originally portrayed, and that...