While it is widely believed that regions which experienced a transition to Neolithic agriculture early also become institutionally and economically more advanced, many indicators suggest that within the Western agricultural core (including Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and Southwest...

This paper investigates the long-run influence of the Neolithic Revolution on contemporary cultural norms and institutions as reflected in the dimension of collectivism-individualism. We outline an agricultural origins-model of cultural divergence where we claim that the advent of farming in a...

1. Introduction -- 2. African Origins -- 3. Human Capital Evolution in a Cooling Climate -- 4. Hunting and Gathering Homo Sapiens -- 5. The Out-of-Africa Dispersal -- 6. Glacial Adaptations -- 7. Economic Organization on the Eve of Agriculture -- 8. Domestication of Plants, Animals and Humans --...