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→Initial Impact on Societies
The other major development evident in New and Old World societies is the freeing up of labor. While plant domestication can be labor intensive, the greater output of food allows larger populations to form. Most or if not all settled societies show evidence of families becoming larger, where even social norms and systems evolved so that women began having more children. Once labor increased, then more people were able to focus on other activities, including the production of other goods that supported agriculture. Innovations often lead to other innovations to support them. Agriculture led to many secondary innovations that helped to support it. This included new technologies such as plows, the need for mathematics to calculate field areas, and eventually writing became one result in some societies that needed to account for agricultural goods being produced.
While we often see these impacts, particularly as they spread across different agricultural regions, as having beneficial results for societies. The reality is much more mixed. First, the environment greatly suffered. Plant domestication leads to the need for clearing more land, including burning of fields to fertilize them and clear them. This, already after 8000 before present, began to have an impact on societies and even likely global temperature. While we think global warming has been a modern effect of industry, agriculture arguably helped to create the first significant wave of human-induced climate change.
==Spread of Impact==
