Some communities adopted cultivation quickly; others maintained foraging strategies for millennia alongside agricultural communities; others never made the transition until forced to by external pressures.

In the Fertile Crescent, the center of the “original” agricultural revolution, the process is thought to have proceeded roughly as follows.

Wild cereal harvesting, practiced by Natufian and early PPN communities, gradually intensified.

Some communities began to plant and tend specific plots of wild cereals, effectively beginning the process of cultivation.

Over generations, the harvesting and planting of these managed cereal stands exerted selection pressure on the plants, leading to the genetic changes — notably the shift from shattering seed heads to non-shattering ones that stay on the plant until harvested — that define domestication in the botanical sense.

A similar process occurred with the wild animals that would become the first domestic livestock: wild sheep, goats, cattle, and pigs were increasingly herded and managed before the full genetic changes of domestication were established.