What changes did agriculture bring to North and South America?
1 Answer
The development of agriculture permitted the development of cities and advanced cultural civilizations.
Explanation:
Without agriculture people must move from place to place to find food and game to hunt. This creates a nomadic life style. As most of the time and energy of the population is devoted to finding food there is little time to develop specialized skills or technologies.
As the people of South and Central America developed means of agriculture there was a surplus of food available to the population.
This surplus of food meant that the people did not have to move continually. Homes, cultural centers, towns, and even cities could be built.
With a surplus of food not everybody had to work the land. Specialists could develop skill such as metal working, medicine, technology, fighting skills, and administration. As the population density increased the need for these specialists increased and the general population became more dependent on the specialists who became the upper class elites.
The development of cities, cultures, and empires came as result of the increased population feed by the improvements in agriculture. By the time Europeans arrived in the Americas large advanced cultural empires of the Inca and Aztecs had been developed in South and Central America.
