''First Farmers: the Origins of Agricultural Societies'' offers readers an understanding of the origins and histories of early agricultural populations in all parts of the world. This book: uses data from archeology, comparative linguistics, and biological anthropology to cover developments over the past 12,000 years; examines the reasons for the multiple primary origins of agriculture; focuses on agricultural origins in and dispersals out of the Middle East, central Africa, China, New Guinea, Mesoamerica and the northern Andes; and, covers the origins and dispersals of major language families such as Indo-European, Austronesian, Sino-Tibetan, Niger-Congo and Uto-Aztecan.