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Humans

The biggest coincidence in human evolution

Farming arose on multiple continents among populations with radically different cultures and environments and with no means of communicating with each other – how did it crop up independently at about the same time?

By Michael Marshall

11 March 2025

The move from hunting and gathering to farming happened around the same time everywhere

LUIS & MARTA MONTANYA/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

This is an extract from Our Human Story, our newsletter about the revolution in archaeology. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every month.

Let’s talk about the biggest coincidence in human evolution. To fully appreciate this coincidence, you need to see it in context. The oldest known hominins lived 7 million years ago, so we have been evolving separately from apes for at least that long. Our own species, Homo sapiens, seems to be about 300,000 years…

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