The Biggest Technological Development in Human History Happened All Across the World Around the Same Time, by Groups of People With Zero Contact With One Another

Around the world, on separate continents that had no contact with each other, multiple groups of ancient humans invented farming more or less simultaneously — and scientists still don't know how or why. Known to archaeologists and anthropologists as the Neolithic Revolution, the discovery of this historical head-scratcher is by no means new. Nevertheless, it continues to fascinate folks like Michael Marshall, an author at New Scientist who pondered this phenomenon in a new piece about this quantum leap in human development. As a 2023 PNAS paper cited by Marshall suggests, the things scientists do know about this incredible happenstance are what make it so captivating. After the great ice sheets age of the Pleistocene Epoch began to retreat about 11,700 years ago, humans who had gradually migrated to at least four continents — Africa, Eurasia, and North and South America — moved from hunting and gathering to domesticating plants. In as many as 24 separate sites of origin, the paper e ... Read full article.