Agriculture in the context of "Farmlands"

Human history or world history is the record of humankind from prehistory to the present. Modern humans evolved in Africa around 300,000 years ago and initially lived as hunter-gatherers. They migrated out of Africa during the Last Ice Age and had spread to every continent except Antarctica by the end of the Ice Age 12,000 years ago. Soon afterward, the Neolithic Revolution in West Asia brought the first systematic husbandry of plants and animals, and saw many humans transition from nomadic lives to sedentary existences as farmers in permanent settlements. The growing complexity of human societies necessitated systems of accounting and writing.

These developments paved the way for the emergence of early civilizations in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Peru, the Indus Valley, and China, marking the beginning of the ancient period in the 4th millenium BCE. These civilizations enabled the establishment of regional empires and provided fertile ground for the advent of transformative philosophical and religious ideas. Hinduism originated during the late Bronze Age and was followed by the many seminal belief systems of the Axial Age: Buddhism, Confucianism, Greek philosophy, Jainism, Judaism, Taoism, and Zoroastrianism. Christianity began later as an offshoot of Judaism. The subsequent post-classical period, from about 500 to 1500 CE, witnessed the rise of Islam and China's flourishing under the Tang and Song dynasties while civilization expanded to new parts of the world and trade between societies increased. The political landscape was shaped by the rise and fall of major empires, such as the Byzantine Empire, the Islamic caliphates, and the Mongol Empire. This period's invention of gunpowder and the printing press greatly affected later history.

A civilization (also spelled civilisation in British English) is any complex society characterized by the development of the state, social stratification, urbanization, and symbolic systems of communication beyond signed or spoken languages (namely, writing systems).

Civilizations are organized around densely populated settlements, divided into more or less rigid hierarchical social classes of division of labour, often with a ruling elite and subordinate urban and rural populations, which engage in intensive agriculture, mining, small-scale manufacture and trade. Civilization concentrates power, extending human control over the rest of nature, including over other human beings. Civilizations are characterized by elaborate agriculture, architecture, infrastructure, technological advancement, currency, taxation, regulation, and specialization of labour.

Biology is the scientific study of life and living organisms. It is a broad natural science that encompasses a wide range of fields and unifying principles that explain the structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, and distribution of life. Central to biology are five fundamental themes: the cell as the basic unit of life, genes and heredity as the basis of inheritance, evolution as the driver of biological diversity, energy transformation for sustaining life processes, and the maintenance of internal stability (homeostasis).

Biology examines life across multiple levels of organization, from molecules and cells to organisms, populations, and ecosystems. Subdisciplines include molecular biology, physiology, ecology, evolutionary biology, developmental biology, and systematics, among others. Each of these fields applies a range of methods to investigate biological phenomena, including observation, experimentation, and mathematical modeling. Modern biology is grounded in the theory of evolution by natural selection, first articulated by Charles Darwin, and in the molecular understanding of genes encoded in DNA. The discovery of the structure of DNA and advances in molecular genetics have transformed many areas of biology, leading to applications in medicine, agriculture, biotechnology, and environmental science.

Mesopotamia is a historical region of West Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the Fertile Crescent. It corresponds roughly to the territory of modern Iraq and forms the eastern geographic boundary of the modern Middle East. Just beyond it lies southwestern Iran, where the region transitions into the Persian plateau, marking the shift from the Arab world to Iran. In the broader sense, the historical region of Mesopotamia also includes parts of present-day Iran (southwest), Turkey (southeast), Syria (northeast), and Kuwait.

Mesopotamia is the site of the earliest developments of the Neolithic Revolution from around 10,000 BC. It has been identified as having "inspired some of the most important developments in human history, including the invention of the wheel, the planting of the first cereal crops, the development of cursive script, mathematics, astronomy, and agriculture". It is recognised as the cradle of some of the world's earliest civilizations.

Agriculture, forestry, and fishing (Japanese: 農林水産, nōrinsuisan) form the primary sector of industry of the Japanese economy together with the Japanese mining industry. Together, they account for 1.3% of gross national product; only 20% of Japan's land is suitable for cultivation, and the agricultural economy is highly subsidized.

Agriculture, forestry, and fishing dominated the Japanese economy until the 1940s, but thereafter declined into relative unimportance (see Agriculture in the Empire of Japan). In the late 19th century (Meiji period), these sectors had accounted for more than 80% of employment. Employment in agriculture declined in the prewar period, but the sector was still the largest employer (about 50% of the work force) by the end of World War II. It was further declined to 23.5% in 1965, 11.9% in 1977, and to 7.2% in 1988. The importance of agriculture in the national economy later continued its rapid decline, with the share of net agricultural production in GNP finally reduced between 1975 and 1989 from 4.1% to 3% In the late 1980s, 85.5% of Japan's farmers were also engaged in occupations outside farming, and most of these part-time farmers earned most of their income from nonfarming activities.

Land consumption as part of human resource consumption is the conversion of land with healthy soil and intact habitats into areas for industrial agriculture, traffic (road building) and especially urban human settlements. More formally, the EEA has identified three land consuming activities:

1. The expansion of built-up area which can be directly measured;
2. the absolute extent of land that is subject to exploitation by agriculture, forestry or other economic activities; and
3. the over-intensive exploitation of land that is used for agriculture and forestry.

In all of those respects, land consumption is equivalent to typical land use in industrialized regions and civilizations.

Population density (in agriculture: standing stock or plant density) is a measurement of population per unit land area. It is mostly applied to humans, but sometimes to other living organisms too. It is a key geographical term.

In general, a rural area or a countryside is a geographic area that is located outside towns and cities. Typical rural areas have a low population density and small settlements. Agricultural areas and areas with forestry are typically described as rural, as well as other areas lacking substantial development. Different countries have varying definitions of rural for statistical and administrative purposes.

Rural areas have unique economic and social dynamics due to their relationship with land-based industry such as agriculture, forestry, and resource extraction. Rural economics can be subject to boom and bust cycles and vulnerable to extreme weather or natural disasters, such as droughts. These dynamics alongside larger economic forces encouraging urbanization have led to significant demographic declines, called rural flight, where economic incentives encourage younger populations to go to cities for education and access to jobs, leaving older, less educated, and less wealthy populations in the rural areas. Slower economic development results in poorer services like healthcare, education, and infrastructure. This cycle of poverty contributes to why three quarters of the global impoverished live in rural areas according to the Food and Agricultural Organization.

The 4th millennium BC spanned the years 4000 BC to 3001 BC. Some of the major changes in human culture during this time included the beginning of the Bronze Age and the invention of writing, which played a major role in starting recorded history.

The city states of Sumer and the (Predynastic) Kingdom of Egypt were established and grew to prominence. Agriculture spread widely across Eurasia.

A drainage basin is an area of land in which all flowing surface water converges to a single point, such as a river mouth, or flows into another body of water, such as a lake or ocean. A basin is separated from adjacent basins by a perimeter, the drainage divide, made up of a succession of elevated features, such as ridges and hills. A basin may consist of smaller basins that merge at river confluences, forming a hierarchical pattern.

Other terms for a drainage basin are catchment area, catchment basin, drainage area, river basin, water catchment, water basin, and impluvium. In North America, they are commonly called a watershed, though in other English-speaking places, "watershed" is used only in its original sense, that of the drainage divide line.