Bellwood Peter. First Farmers: The Origins of Agricultural Societies

Blackwell Publishing, 2004. — xix + 360 p. — ISBN: 0-631-20565-9.First Farmers: the Origins of Agricultural Societies offers readers an understanding of the origins and histories of early agricultural populations in all parts of the world.
- Uses data from archaeology, comparative linguistics, and biological anthropology to cover developments over the past 12,000 years
- Examines the reasons for the multiple primary origins of agriculture
- Focuses on agricultural origins in and dispersals out of the Middle East, central Africa, China, New Guinea, Mesoamerica and the northern Andes
- Covers the origins and dispersals of major language families such as Indo-European, Austronesian, Sino-Tibetan, Niger-Congo and Uto-Aztecan.The Early Farming Dispersal Hypothesis in Perspective.
The Origins and Dispersals of Agriculture: Some Operational Considerations.
The Beginnings of Agriculture in Southwest Asia.
Tracking the Spreads of Farming beyond the Fertile Crescent: Europe and Asia.
Africa: An Independent Focus of Agricultural Development?
The Beginnings of Agriculture in East Asia.
The Spread of Agriculture into Southeast Asia and Oceania.
Early Agriculture in the Americas.
What Do Language Families Mean for Human Prehistory?
The Spread of Farming: Comparing the Archaeology and the Linguistics.
Genetics, Skeletal Anthropology, and the People Factor.
The Nature of Early Agricultural Expansion.