Neanderthals, Bandits and Farmers2003

Colin Tudge overturns the traditional view that farming began in the Middle East 10,000 years ago, quickly led to the Neolithic farming revolution, and ended the hunting-gathering lifestyle. Agriculture in some form had been practiced for thousands of years before that, Tudge argues. Neolithic farming was not the beginning of agriculture but the beginning of agriculture on a large scale, in one place, with refined tools.