In the Old World, around 10,000 BCE, bands of hunter gatherers began the transition to agricultural societies, domesticating various types of livestock and cultivating various grains and other crops to create more dependable food supplies, probably because starving to death sucks big time. By 5,000 BCE, planting and herding had become the primary source of food across the majority of the Old World. As a result, many groups of people became less nomadic, building more permanent settlements which over time evolved into cities. Populations began to rapidly expand. Thanks to agriculture, food supplies became sufficient for people to start thinking about doing things besides trying to get food, leading to the formation of complex hierarchal societies and religions which created art and monuments and studied the world around them. Facing mounting logistical challenges, these complex societies created writing to record and share information and ideas. The domestication of the horse around 4,000 BCE allowed these ideas to spread rapidly, not to mention also the establishment of long-distance trade and the rapid movement of people and supplies, allowing the growing cities to exert their influence over a wider area, allowing for the growth of kingdoms and empires. Though simple copper and gold ornaments had long been worn by most peoples, the widespread smelting of metal allowed for the crafting of tools and weapons, bringing the stone age to an end. By 3,000 BCE, the first great civilizations began emerging in Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, and China.
Things didn’t quite work out the same in most of the New World, due to a myriad of reasons that have nothing to do with the racist reasons your drunk uncle brings up when he ties one on and claims to be stating facts too true for polite society. Native Americans in southern Mexico first began cultivating corn, beans, and squash around 9,000 BCE, with the crops spreading southward through Central America and large parts of South America soon after. However, they moved north much more slowly, largely due to the fact that the northern part of Mexico and the southwestern United States are mostly desert where tropical plants don’t grow so great. The fact that Native Americans had nothing analogous to the horse didn’t help anything either, greatly slowly the spread of new ideas and methods for better living this crazy thing we call life. In fact, Native Americans pretty much had no livestock whatsoever, the majority of large animals on the two continents apparently not being down with the whole domestication thing whatsoever. Aside from the dogs their ancestors had brought with them, the only animals widely domesticated by Native Americans were the llama around 2,000 BCE and the turkey around 1,000 BCE.
Despite these handicaps, complex civilizations began to form in the agricultural dependent areas of southern Mexico, Central America, and the northwestern parts of South America, the first great civilization being the Olmec who emerged around 1,500 BCE. These civilizations built cities, experienced population booms, formed complex hierarchies and religions, developed systems of writing, built trading networks, and created art and monuments, including large stone statues and colossal pyramids. What they didn’t develop was metallurgy, which effectively kept them in the stone age. Though like in the Old World, from early on people utilized copper and gold for ornamentation, and even developed smelting to make more complex pieces, they failed to make the shift to metal tools. Lacking easy access to tin and other such metals, they couldn’t make harder and more durable early alloys, such as bronze, leaving their stone tools the better alternative, thus limiting any interest in pursuing such endeavors. Though over time these Mesoamerican civilizations rose and fell, they continually grew grander in scale, both in relation to the territory they controlled and the monuments they built, resulting in the construction of cities containing more than 100,000 inhabitants by 500 AD, with some cities reaching over 200,000 inhabitants by the time the Europeans arrived on the scene.
Comparatively, the early Native Americans of what is today the United States and Canada pretty much retained the same hunter gatherer lifestyle as their ancestors who crossed Beringia, though this is not to say they didn’t adapt their environment to their needs, just that the option of domesticating plants and animals wasn’t available to them. Though they did utilize practices such as starting fires in forests to create prairies for grazing animals, overall they largely survived by adapting to the world around them. Mostly because they had no other option and starving has never been seen to be all that great of an option. Populations remained relatively stable based upon the ability of the surrounding land to support them, growing in times of plenty and shrinking in times of scarcity, which often resulted in conflicts between tribes attempting to secure limited resources. Though such movements were limited by their lack of pack animals and the relative strength of their neighbors. While trade did occur, it was very geographically limited, and communication remained solely an oral affair. However, despite all of this, many tribes, especially those in areas more naturally food secure, began to expand and build more complex societies by 1,000 BCE. This process first occurred on the coasts, where food was more abundant, but was then aided by the development of corn, squash, and bean varieties better capable of surviving in a wider diversity of biomes. By 2,000 BCE, these crops began appearing first in the American Southwest and then in the Eastern Woodlands. The resulting agricultural revolution resulted in widespread change in these areas.
