Institutional Innovation and the Neolithic Revolution

Key Insight

The end of the Ice Age around 15000 BC brought a 'Long Summer' with global temperatures rising significantly, creating a critical juncture with expanding animal populations and abundant wild plants. This environment set the stage for the Neolithic Revolution, the transition to sedentary life, farming, and herding, fundamentally driven by the domestication of plants and animals, a technological change that drastically increased food production from available resources.

Early evidence of farming and domestication emerged in the Middle East's Hilly Flanks around 9500 BC, particularly with the Natufian culture at sites like Jericho. Crucially, archaeological evidence, such as year-round gazelle hunting at Natufian sites, indicates that these people were sedentary *before* they adopted farming and herding. This challenges the traditional view, popularized by some theories, that abundant domesticable species directly led to farming, which then caused sedentarism and complex institutions.

The shift to sedentary life, while offering advantages like easier food storage and tool use, also intensified social challenges like conflict resolution. Archaeological findings from Natufian graves and settlements reveal the presence of complex, hierarchical societies with elements of extractive institutions, including differential burials and specialized elite dwellings, long before widespread farming. This suggests that political revolutions, concentrating power and establishing rudimentary law, order, and property rights, likely enabled the transition to sedentary life, and subsequently farming, as elites benefited from the resulting societal reorganization.