the stone age period that refers to the time after the start of agriculture is the
Stone Age The Neolithic, or New Stone Age, was approximately characterized by the adoption of agriculture. The shift from food gathering to food producing, in itself one of the most revolutionary changes in human history, was accompanied by the so-called Neolithic Revolution: the development of pottery, polished stone tools, and construction of more complex, larger settlements such as Göbekli Tepe and Çatal Hüyük. Some of these features began in certain localities even earlier, in the transitional Mesolithic. The first Neolithic cultures started around 7000 BCE in the fertile crescent and spread concentrically to other areas of the world; however, the Near East was probably not the only nucleus of agriculture, the cultivation of maize in Meso-America and of rice in the Far East being others.
Neolithic Revolution The traditional view is that agricultural food production supported a denser population, which in turn supported larger sedentary communities, the accumulation of goods and tools, and specialization in diverse forms of new labor. The development of larger societies led to the development of different means of decision making and to governmental organization. Food surpluses made possible the development of a social elite who were not otherwise engaged in agriculture, industry or commerce, but dominated their communities by other means and monopolized decision-making.[60] Jared Diamond (in The World Until Yesterday) identifies the availability of milk and/or cereal grains as permitting mothers to raise both an older (e.g. 3 or 4 year old) child and a younger child concurrently, whereas this was not possible previously. The result is that a population can significantly more-rapidly increase its size than would otherwise be the case, resources permitting.