The early settlers who originally settled in Mesopotamia, already have to had knowledge of how agriculture can benefit from carefully picking out farming land. They also seemingly had knowledge of irrigation, which most likely came from multiple settlements across the region all combining and putting their efforts into a larger "First City" between two fertile rivers. Mesopotamia had a headstart on other early civilizations due to its prime real estate.

This is a great entry as well, i never thought about how ideal some of these tasks could have been when having to care for a child at the same time. Despite being more organized and closer to being a society, there were still dangers that were presented to our ancestors such as wildlife, bacteria and viruses, and even other tribes or small city like groups. Keeping a child fed, safe and distracted was most likely very important to mothers and could be easily accomplished while simultaneously doing some of the most important tasks like basket weaving, preparing food for long term storage, and tending to whatever settlement there was while men were away hunting.

I think this is a perfect landmark or transition point between our hunter gatherer and nomadic ancestors and the beginning of true civilization. The first Humans who realized that agriculture could be maximized by farming in mineral rich soil like that by riverbanks kickstarted a whole chain that lead to farming, trading, caste societies, as well as religion and philosophy. It really is a crazy example of a "butterfly" effect scenario.

The connection that other animals from the ice age have to humans is really spectacular, considering that most likely if we were not following the migration pattern of Mammoths, Rhinos, and Camels over the bering land bridge, we most likely would have never crossed over to the Americas and hundreds of cultures would have never been possible. It feels like exploration is almost engrained into our DNA the way Homo Sapiens colonized the entire planet and dominated every ecosystem in mere thousands of years.

I have always found it so interesting how adaptable we are as both a species as well as our entire ancestral tree. It is amazing if you really think about the odds of our species making it far as we have and how much has been accomplished in that time. That adaptability and teamwork is what has helped our species survive for as long as we have and even enabled us to create long term and complex societies around the world, many without even having knowledge of the others.