The Neolithic Cognitive Leap: More Than a Revolution the New Stone Age Involved a New Understanding of Time

While all agree that the Neolithic era was a revolution, the change was even more monumental. While I believe Upper Paleolithic people could work with and plan short-term projects and processes, their way of life was generally one of immediacy. They did not store and save food for times of scarcity, for example. But in the Neolithic era, an understanding of long-term linear time allowed the societies to radically change their way of life by planning their farming over a year's time and then developing a large number of processes that required long-term conceptions. And it was this ability that allowed the Neolithic cultures to flourish.