Small Animals, Private Property, and the Agricultural Revolution

The Neolithic Agricultural Revolution marked the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture around 10,000 years ago. As humans began to cultivate crops, they could develop social organizations larger than kinship, with long-lasting consequences. Researchers from distinct disciplines have explored the causes of the Agricultural Revolution, focusing on ecological and institutional factors. This project proposes and tests an unexplored cause of this remarkable shift in mode of subsistence: the abundance of small relative to large animals, an ecological feature that may have encouraged uncooperative hunting and private property, an institutional development posited to have favored the shift to agriculture.