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Growing population forced the need for return to nomadic existence or intensifying food production.
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Communites that chose agriculture gained more power because of larger populations and more resources.
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Agriculture spread through budding, people moving beyond the villages where they were born.
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Tools and technologies - irrigation, better crops, burning to clear fields and forrests, and terraced farming - were created to make agriculture more efficient.
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Stored food allowed support of both farmers and nonfarmers - priests, potters, builders and soldiers.
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Non-settled societies helped spread goods and technologies by transporting them from one community to another.
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Most areas were first organized into villages, but some of these eventually grew into larger communities.
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In societies that depended on large families and child-bearing, women had fewer opportunites to do different jobs outside the home, and their power and wealth were diminished as a result. Men had increasing power outside the home.
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Population growth and density created needs that led to cities (geographical areas) and states (political organizations) forming at the same time.
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Larger communities required organization of resources, relationsjhips, laws, war, trade and religion because family was no longer enough.
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Epidemic disease was more likely in agrarian societies where people lived close together. Connections and travel among socieities caused the spread of disease within regions.
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Populations grow faster than resources which leads to political rise and fall, economic boom and bust, and cultural bloom and decay called "Malthusian Cycles."
