<P> The Neolithic Revolution involved far more than the adoption of a limited set of food - producing techniques . During the next millennia it would transform the small and mobile groups of hunter - gatherers that had hitherto dominated human pre-history into sedentary (non-nomadic) societies based in built - up villages and towns . These societies radically modified their natural environment by means of specialized food - crop cultivation, with activities such as irrigation and deforestation which allowed the production of surplus food . </P> <P> These developments provided the basis for densely populated settlements, specialization and division of labour, more trade, the development of non-portable art and architecture, centralized administrations and political structures, hierarchical ideologies, depersonalized systems of knowledge (e.g. writing), and property ownership . The earliest known civilization developed in Sumer in southern Mesopotamia (c . 5,500 BP); its emergence also heralded the beginning of the Bronze Age . </P> <P> The relationship of the above - mentioned Neolithic characteristics to the onset of agriculture, their sequence of emergence, and empirical relation to each other at various Neolithic sites remains the subject of academic debate, and varies from place to place, rather than being the outcome of universal laws of social evolution . The Levant saw the earliest developments of the Neolithic Revolution from around 10,000 BC, followed by sites in the wider Fertile Crescent . The Neolithic Revolution "inspired some of the most important developments in human history including the invention of the wheel, the planting of the first cereal crops and the development of cursive script, mathematics, astronomy and agriculture ." </P> <P> The term Neolithic Revolution was coined in 1923 by V. Gordon Childe to describe the first in a series of agricultural revolutions in Middle Eastern history . The period is described as a "revolution" to denote its importance, and the great significance and degree of change affecting the communities in which new agricultural practices were gradually adopted and refined . </P>

What was the major cause of the neolithic revolution