As far as the Neolithic is concerned it has been found that the earliest known sites containing the remains of domesticated plants and animals are as old as 11,000 to 9000 years and these belong to south west Asia.
These sites such as that of Jargon, a settlement at the foot of the Zagros Mountains in Iraq were mostly small villages of mud huts. There is evidence not only of cultivation and domestication of animals but also of trade.
At the biblical city of Jericho, remains of tools, houses, and clothing indicate that the oasis was occupied by Neolithic people as early as 7800 BC. Now, when all the evidences are pieced together, it seems that agriculture spread out form south west Asia to adjacent areas, eventually reaching south eastern Europe by 6000 BC and slowly spreading north and west.
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Another centre from which agriculture spread is south East Asia where it began sometime between 6800 and 3000 BC. Now it is more or less unanimous opinion among the scholars that by 4000 BC stone-using peasant farmers were well established over most of temperate Europe.
Many Stone Age hunters had adopted the new economies; still others lived by hunting and gathering along with the farmers. Both subsistence patterns survived side by side for many centuries.
For instance, in Scandinavia, fishermen and fowlers of the Retable culture absorbed some new economic practices without making major changes in their traditional way of life. They traded fish for grain products grown by their neighbors, and lived on the outskirts of cleared farmlands.
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At this juncture man in Europe stood ready for a great leap forward. Another chapter in human history had already begun.