Why did they change their nomadic, hunter-gatherer lives so radically?
I surmise that it wasn’t so radically. It probably took thousands of years from the discovery that you could save and plant seeds from one year to the next. Meanwhile, they hunted and gathered returning to discover the same grains had grown back. Someone had to be paying attention so that they began to deliberately hold back some seeds and plant them.
More impressive to me is the swift division of labor and specialization that arose because of agriculture. Potters, artisans, even traders could exist because food was available readily and a home did not have to be dismantled and moved.
All speculation on my part...but fascinating stuff...
Since women did more of the gathering while the men were hunting, it is likely they made a significant contribution to the invention of basic gardening/agriculture. This differences in role I believe several things I have noticed in modern male/female behavior and skills.
Women tend to chatter more, likely from millennia of siting and working together in caves while the men were off hunting and keeping quiet to not scare the game.
Men are better at algebra which is abstract as is hunting moving quarry. women may be better at geometry which deals with fixed shapes and comparisons.
Women do better at night work as women always had to wake up several times a night to nurse their infants. In the first months an infant wants to nurse every 3 or 4 hours. Failure to wake quickly and feed the fussing infant can lead to loud crying which would attract dangerous animals, not to mention waking the men and ruining their next day’s hunt.
Have you noticed these tendencies in your relationships?
It’s likely that noticing that seeds were edible, and that undigested seeds would spring up in waste piles, took less than one year. Observation of wild critters’ choice of plants probably helped expand the menu a great deal. The one drawback would have been the first vegans. ;^)
Multirow barley, which resulted from prehistoric plant breeding, was in use at least 14,000 years ago — an example of the survival of perishable materials and also of the usefulness of RC dating.
Trade with neighbors seems to have been around a long time, Colin Renfrew studied the obsidian trade, which on land and sea, and can be linked to specific ancient mines thanks to analysis of the obsidian artifacts.
We humans, we’re quite remarkable. :^)