In pre-agricultural times, humans were already way ahead of all the other primates. Still, when it came to food access, there was not much fundamental difference between humans and chimpanzees, for example. Both primate species lived as hunter-gatherers. Then, as now, male chimpanzees hunted monkeys and cannibalized chimpanzees from rival tribes. Otherwise, they would just look for fruits and termites alongside their female partners. At one stroke, agriculture elevated humans above and beyond the hunting-gathering level, leaving chimpanzees far behind the curve. The Agricultural Revolution was a game-changer in every sense of the word.
China began to take shape in the Agricultural Revolution. The first Chinese farmers turned out to be women. Shennong ought to be a goddess. Archeological findings indicate that women in the Neolithic (New Stone) Age did enjoy a high status in northern China. They were honored and even deified in the millet-farming villages around today's Xian about 9,000 years ago.
Neolithic women were farming pioneers, taking advantage of the botany knowledge acquired from foraging as gatherers. Individually or collectively, they got inspired and made a quantum leap to the groundbreaking idea of farming. Domesticating wild plants, they effectively moved their food sources much closer to their dwellings. Village life would soon settle in as a norm, followed by nation-building. Thanks to women, agriculture ushered in civilization.
