Quote Originally Posted by HoreTore View Post
A difference of 5000 years is more or less the same time...?

Anyway, it wasn't an instant thing either. As for why it happened in the first place, there are several hypothesis.
5,000 years (I noticed you went with the maximum figure, 2-3 is equally likely) is nothing out of a supposed history of hundreds of thousands of years. As for the link on Chinese ice age farming, I don't doubt people take time to settle into an agricultural lifestyle, my point was that, globally-speaking, the advent of agriculture is pretty instantaneous.

The second link reaffirms my point - it seems that climate change, demographics, habitat etc cannot explain such a sudden advent of farming throughout the world, since these things varied hugely from place to place.

I will check out your other link etc tomorrow running out of time here...