List five theories on the origin of agriculture and provide a brief explanation of each

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

• Agriculture as a Divine Gift—Although there are many descriptions on the origin of
agriculture based on classical mythologies from a variety of civilizations, the same
general theme is clearly that agriculture was a divine gift.
• Agriculture as a Discovery—There are a number of theories on how agriculture was
discovered; the ones proposed by Sauer (1952) and Anderson (1954) are the most widely
accepted.
• Agriculture as a Result of Stress—There is now a considerable amount of support
for the theory proposed by Cohen (1977), which suggests that the increased stress
caused by an increase in population and depleted resources led to the adoption of
agriculture as a means of procuring food.
• Agriculture as an Extension of Gathering—In primitive societies based on
hunting/gathering, people had the knowledge to develop agriculture but elected not to.
Basically, hunter/gathers did not farm because food in the wild was plentiful.
• Agriculture as a Result of No Specific Model—All existing models proposed thus far
have been refuted in one way or another. The no-specific-model concept allows for a
wide array of possibilities in which agriculture was developed. Basically, this theory
recognizes that the human civilization is very different in all parts of the world and
no single model can explain the origin of agriculture (Harlan, 1992).