The First Villages

From its original birthplace in East Africa, mankind took millions of years to spread all over the world. Homo sapiens gradually replaced the other species of hominids to reign alone on earth and give humanity its deep unity. Much later, just 10,000 years ago, various areas of the world under-went climatic and environmental changes that led the previously nomadic human communities to domesticate plants and animals and create the first villages.

This Neolithic Revolution, a key event in human history, took place in three major areas: the Fertile Crescent, stretching from the Jordan Valley in Mesopotamia through Syria and Turkey, and with rapid expansion towards Egypt, Europe, Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent; China in the basin of the Yellow River, then spreading across the whole of the Far East; and Central America. The concomitance of these events and their parallel development mark the starting point of the collective history of the world as recounted and illustrated in the Louvre Abu Dhabi.