Climate-driven technical change: seasonality and the invention of agriculture

During the Neolithic Revolution, seven populations independently invented agriculture. In this paper, I argue that this innovation was a response to a large increase in climatic seasonality. Hunter-gatherers in the most affected regions became sedentary in order to store food and smooth their consumption. I present a model capturing the key incentives for adopting agriculture, and I test the resulting predictions against a global panel dataset of climate conditions and Neolithic adoption dates. I find that invention and adoption were both systematically more likely in places with higher seasonality. The findings of this paper imply that seasonality patterns 10,000 years ago were amongst the major determinants of the present day global distribution of crop productivities, ethnic groups, cultural traditions, and political institutions. ∗email: [email protected]. I am grateful to my advisor Joachim Voth, for his continuous guidance and support. I also thank for useful comments Ran Abramitzky, Francesco Amodio, Leonardo Bursztyn, Paula Bustos, Enriqueta Camps, Davide Cantoni, Bruno Caprettini, John Cherry, Paul David, Christian Dippel, James Fenske, Oded Galor, Nicola Gennaioli, Fabrizio Germano, Albrecht Glitz, Libertad Gonzalez, Avner Greif, Jonathan Hersh, Peter Koudijs, Thomas Leppard, Lorenzo Magnolfi, Alberto Martin, Stelios Michalopoulos, Mrdjan Mladjan, Omer Moav, Michele Monti, Luigi Pascali, Gonçalo Pina, Andrei Potlogea, Marta Reynal, Paul Seabright, Yannay Spitzer, Jaume Ventura, Nico Voigtlander, Noam Yuchtman, Romain Wacziarg, and David Weil. This project benefited greatly from audience comments received at the World Economic History Congress in Utrecht, the EHS Annual Conference in Oxford, The TSE Brow Bag seminar, the Yellow Pad Seminar at Santa Clara University, the SSH seminar at Stanford, the Macro Lunch at Brown, the History Tea at Harvard, the Cliometric Conference in Tucson, the World Cliometric Conference in Honolulu, the BGSE Jamboree, and the International Lunch and Applied Seminar at Pompeu.