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 and will be of interest to all students of human variation and large-scale patterns in human history. Using data from archaeology, comparative linguistics and biological anthropology, archaeologist Peter Bellwood covers developments within the past 12,000 years in Asia, Europe, Africa, the Pacific and the Americas. First Farmers examines the reasons for the multiple primary origins of agriculture, looks at relations between hunter-gatherers and farmers, and addresses issues of agricultural adoption, the origins and dispersal histories of language families, and the dispersal histories of biological populations. Bellwood offers discussion of regional agricultural origins in and dispersals out of these areas: the Middle East, central Africa, China, New Guinea, Mesoamerica and the northern Andes. The linguistic survey covers the origins and dispersals of major language families such as Indo-European, Austronesian, Sino-Tibetan, Niger-Congo and Uto-Aztecan.