Neolithic Revolution as irrigation and deforestation which allowed the production of surplus food. Other developments found very widely are the domestication of animals, pottery, polished stone tools, and rectangular houses. These developments, sometimes called the Neolithic package, provided the basis for centralized administrations and political structures, hierarchical ideologies, depersonalized systems of knowledge (e.g. writing), densely populated settlements, specialization and division of labour, more trade, the development of non-portable art and architecture, and property ownership. The earliest known civilization developed in Sumer in southern Mesopotamia (); its emergence also heralded the beginning of the Bronze Age. The relationship of the above-mentioned Neolithic characteristics
Neolithic Expansion of the Middle East through the Old World. The Neolithic spread throughout Europe between about 8200 and 6000 years ago. Neolithic Expansion At the beginning of the Holocene, about 12,000 years ago, humanity entered a period of increasing technological sophistication, resulting in the Neolithic Revolution. Breadmaking considerably predates this period, but people in the Middle East now began cultivating wild cereal and pulses. Dogs had been domesticated over thousands of years; nomadic shepherding became possible through domestication of goats, sheep, horses, camels and cattle. About 7,000 years ago, livestock herding was sufficiently established to allow a widespread abandonment of hunter-gathering