Craig T. answered • 09/25/20
B.A. in Anthropology and Archaeology
Gregor Mandel published a book entitled Experiments on Plant Hybridization in 1866. Even though the book is antiquated it would demonstrate to a Neolithic farmer how to cross bread various plants, mostly wild grasses, to produce plants such as wheat and barley which could be used for making bread. The Neolithic starts the earliest in ancient day Palestine about 9000 B.C. The Neolithic starts later in both Mesopotamia and Egypt. The term Neolithic is used instead of the Agricultural Revolution because the stone tools used during the Neolithic changed dramatically from those of the Paleolithic. Metal tools do not start to show in agriculture until the Chalcolithic when people started to use copper tools. The major terms that define the development of the materials used for tools in ancient times are the Paleolithic, Neolithic, Chalcolithic, Bronze Age and then the Iron Age.
