An Encyclopaedia of Indian Archaeology v1.c9.s6.1

v1.c9.s6.1

During the last three decades the how and why of the transition from hunting and gathering to food-producing has been empirically studied by means of the analysis of archaeological materials. Prior to this cultural evolutionary schemes were formulated and accepted as explanations of man’s cultural evolution. Most of these were found to be largely speculative and were not tested by actual fieldwork. It was all along thought that the problem of the early development of agriculture was rooted in the environmental and cultural conditions obtaining at the end of the Pleistocene [9.10.1], marked by the gradual onset of recent climatic conditions and usually agreed to have occurred around 10000 B.C.