First Farmers

First Farmers examines the reasons for the multiple primary origins of agriculture, looks at relations between hunter-gatherers and farmers, and addresses issues of agricultural adoption, the origins and dispersal histories of language families, and the dispersal histories of biological populations. Bellwood offers discussion of regional agricultural origins in, and dispersals out of, these areas: the Middle East, central Africa, China, New Guinea, Mesoamerica, and the northern Andes. The linguistic survey covers the origins and dispersals of major language families such as Indo-European, Austronesian, Sino-Tibetan, Niger-Congo, and Uto-Aztecan.

Peter Bellwood is Professor of Archaeology at the Australian National University. He is the author of Examining the Farming/Language Dispersal Hypothesis (co-edited with Colin Renfrew, 2003), Prehistory of the Indo-Malaysian Archipelago (2nd edition 1997), The Polynesians: Prehistory of an Island People (1987), and Man’s Conquest of the Pacific: The Prehistory of Southeast Asia and Oceania (1986).