New findings add weight to the theory that states didn’t just spring up from any kind of farming – it had to be grain.

Agricultural innovations are primarily concerned with a need for increasing production (of food, fodder, secondary products) as well as enhancing quality (of produce, production process, growing ...

New research reveals why not just agriculture but also cereal grains were crucial to the formation of humanity’s first states ...

Twelve thousand years ago everybody lived as hunters and gatherers. But by 5,000 years ago most people lived as farmers. This brief period marked the biggest shift ever in human history with ...

Credit...Illustration by Sam Whitney/The New York Times; source photographs by wwing, Fotoforce, Clara Bastian, DaydreamsGirl and Mercedes Rancaño Otero, via Getty ...

In a paper called “The Ant and the Grasshopper: Seasonality and the Invention of Agriculture,” economist Andrea Matranga formalizes a theory for how humans went from grasshoppers to ants—for how we ...

Roman, Egyptian, and Chinese civilizations had many different ingenious inventions. Chocolate was a big aphrodisiac for Mesoamerican civilizations and used for energy. The first earthquake detector is ...