<P> In his book Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond argues that Europeans and East Asians benefited from an advantageous geographical location that afforded them a head start in the Neolithic Revolution . Both shared the temperate climate ideal for the first agricultural settings, both were near a number of easily domesticable plant and animal species, and both were safer from attacks of other people than civilizations in the middle part of the Eurasian continent . Being among the first to adopt agriculture and sedentary lifestyles, and neighboring other early agricultural societies with whom they could compete and trade, both Europeans and East Asians were also among the first to benefit from technologies such as firearms and steel swords . </P> <P> The dispersal of Neolithic culture from the Middle East has recently been associated with the distribution of human genetic markers . In Europe, the spread of the Neolithic culture has been associated with distribution of the E1b1b lineages and Haplogroup J that are thought to have arrived in Europe from North Africa and the Near East respectively . In Africa, the spread of farming, and notably the Bantu expansion, is associated with the dispersal of Y - chromosome haplogroup E1b1a from West Africa . </P>

How would you explain the role of food surplus in the neolithic age