There was an increase in the birth rate when man discovered agriculture.
A study was conducted by Jean-Pierre Bocquet-Appel (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, France) said that there was an increase in the birth rate when man discovered agriculture. This is proved by studying the Skeletons from the Neolithic period.
Anthropologists studied 60 prehistoric American cemeteries to prove the fact that agriculture played a very important role in worldwide increase in birth rate.When assessing the shifts in the demographic pattern prior and after agriculture was discovered in Europe there was a sudden increase of 20-30% over 500 to 700 years, in the proportion of immature skeletons.
Bocquet-Appel and Stephan Naji in their new study about Current Anthropology said that though agriculture was not practiced in the Americas until 7,000 – 8,000 years later, they had similar changes like that of Europe and North Africa that occurred with the advent of agriculture.
They were the first study the demographic pattern in Neolithic period in a worldwide scale.
The advent of agriculture led to more number of people to be fed and increased women’s fertility.
