From Foraging to Farming: A Narrative Review of Theories of the Neolithic Transition
Abstract
The transition from foraging to farming---the Neolithic transition---represents one of the most consequential reorganizations of human subsistence, society, and ecology in the history of our species. This article offers a narrative review of the principal theories advanced to explain why, where, and how agriculture emerged, tracing the intellectual arc from Childe's oasis hypothesis and the "Neolithic Revolution" paradigm to contemporary multi-causal syntheses informed by archaeology, chronometry, and genomics. The review examines the classic models of the twentieth century, including Braidwood's hilly-flanks proposal, Binford's demographic-pressure model, Flannery's broad-spectrum scheduling, and Rindos's coevolutionary framework, before turning to the wave-of-advance account of demic diffusion, Hodder's symbolic reading of the domus, and the climatic stresses associated with the Younger Dryas. More recent contributions---Zeder's pathway-based synthesis, Bellwood's farming-language dispersal hypothesis, and genomic reassessments of domestication---are discussed as steps toward an integrated account in which sedentism, population growth, environmental instability, and intentional management interact rather than compete. It is concluded that no single-factor explanation withstands scrutiny: the Neolithic transition is best understood as a protracted, multi-regional, and mutually reinforcing process whose consequences for demography, disease, social inequality, and human-environment relations continue to shape the modern world.
