Cause they didn’t feel like it.
For a long time, the hunter-gatherer lifestyle was incredibly effective.
Early humans had a deep knowledge of their environment and could find enough food without the need to cultivate it.
Plus, the idea of planting seeds and waiting months for a harvest might have seemed like a huge gamble when you could simply forage for your next meal.
But Around 12,000 years ago, something monumental happened, the end of the last Ice Age.
The planet warmed up, climates stabilized, and a variety of plants and animals became more abundant.
This shift created fertile grounds, for humans to experiment with growing their own food.
Take, for instance, the Fertile Crescent in the Middle East.
This region, often dubbed the “Cradle of Civilization,” had a unique mix of plants like wild wheat and barley and animals like goats and sheep that were ideal for domestication.
People here began to notice that if they saved and planted seeds from the best plants, they could harvest more food in one place.
This was the beginning of agriculture, a slow, experimental process that took generations to refine.
Another cool story comes from China, where early rice farming took root around the same time as the Fertile Crescent developments.
The Yangtze River Valley became a hotbed for rice cultivation, which would eventually spread across Asia and become a staple crop for billions.
