Around 10,000 years back, the man took his first significant steps on the path to society. People living in the Near East at around that time learned to grow edible plants and to domesticate animals. Earlier men were bushman hunters and food collectors, walked across the countryside, ate roots and whenever they could find and kill wild animals.
Farming and food storage provided for a more predictable and plentiful supply of food than food collection or hunting; and as food increased, so did the population. Today we believe that around 10,000 B.C. there were five million people in the world. By 4000 B.C. there may have been four times that many.
A food surplus came with a controlled food supply, meaning that some members of a community could take time off the fields to devote themselves to making better hoes and, later, plows-tools, which in turn increased food production even higher. By B.c.3500, Some of the world's greatest discoveries and inventions have been developed by such craftsmen: the wheel for carts and pottery manufacture, metals for making tools and boats for river and sea merchandise.
We'll see the first city-states, nations, and empires of the world in the following pages. We've seen how they have grown and how some have come to a sudden end while others ' ideas and inventions have fertilized the world today.
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