Until a few years ago, the common idea among archaeologists was that early human beings began to practice farming because they had no choice. Experts claimed that population growth led people to push some of their group members out of the most productive areas where it was easy to hunt and gather plenty of food from the wild.
Living on the poorer edges of the rich environments, according to the old thinking, these people noticed that seeds of gathered wild plants often began to grow where they had been thrown away or accidentally dropped. They then realized that planting crops intentionally in these poor areas provided a more plentiful and reliable source of food than hunting and collecting wild plants that could be eaten. As a result, according to the traditional idea, temporary camps in the poor areas developed into permanent settlements. Recent research, however, suggests it didn't happen quite that way.
Archaeologists now think that agriculture might not have begun just by accident. Instead, it might have begun because early humans did some scientific research. They say that because ancient peoples had experienced occasional bad years when wild foods were not easily available, people thought they should look for ways of making sure they always had enough food. So they experimented with particular wild plants, and eventually chose to grow the ones that seemed the best. Archaeologists say now that necessity was not necessarily the mother of the invention of agriculture. Instead, human creative ability was.