The origins and spread of agriculture and pastoralism in northwestern South Asia
Richard Meadow
Abstract
In 1975 Sir Joseph Hutchinson summarized what was then known about the character of early South Asian plant and animal husbandry. The framework he created for his paper titled “India: local and introduced crops” (Hutchinson 1977) still stands, although the question of origins is somewhat less “obscure” than it was two decades ago. We now know that the development and spread of agriculture and pastoralism in South Asia are complex phenomena that have taken place over the course of more than 9,000 years. Within this period at least three major transformations occurred that can be related to the introduction and adoption of suites of major new crops and animals to the subcontinent. The first of these involved Southwest Asian forms, the second African and Asian species, and the third plants from the Americas. In addition to the imports, local forms of plants and animals came to be husbanded or continued to be gathered from the wild. Indeed, an important feature of South Asia is that it is one of those parts of the world where foragers and farmers lived side-by-side in many localities until quite recently.