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First Farmers: The Origins of Agricultural Societies

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ISBN: 978-0-631-20565-4

October 2004

Wiley-Blackwell

332 pages

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Description

First Farmers: the Origins of Agricultural Societies offers readers an understanding of the origins and histories of early agricultural populations in all parts of the world.

  • Uses data from archaeology, comparative linguistics, and biological anthropology to cover developments over the past 12,000 years
  • Examines the reasons for the multiple primary origins of agriculture
  • Focuses on agricultural origins in and dispersals out of the Middle East, central Africa, China, New Guinea, Mesoamerica and the northern Andes
  • Covers the origins and dispersals of major language families such as Indo-European, Austronesian, Sino-Tibetan, Niger-Congo and Uto-Aztecan
About the Author
Peter Bellwood is Professor of Archaeology at the Australian National University. He is the author of Examining the Farming/Language Dispersal Hypothesis (co-edited with Colin Renfrew, 2003), Prehistory of the Indo-Malaysian Archipelago (2nd edition 1997), The Polynesians: Prehistory of an Island People (1987), and Man’s Conquest of the Pacific: The Prehistory of Southeast Asia and Oceania (1986).
Features

  • Uses data from archaeology, comparative linguistics, and biological anthropology to cover developments over the past 12,000 years
  • Examines thereasons for the multiple primary origins of agriculture
  • Focuses on agricultural origins in and dispersals out of the Middle East, central Africa, China, New Guinea, Mesoamerica and the northern Andes
  • Covers the origins and dispersals of major language families such as Indo-European, Austronesian, Sino-Tibetan, Niger-Congo and Uto-Aztecan.