Agriculture of pre-historic Sri Lanka: from hunter gatherers to farmers

Abstract

The role of Agriculture in the ancient civilization has long been emphasized. Civilizing is the instruct in the arts of human life or regime of human life. History of civilization was based on western perspectives, giving impression that the western part of the world was central to the development of cultures. Though Eastern and Far East totally neglected, very recent researchers has shown world's earliest civilization was in Eastern part of the world, based on Rice Cultivation and fishing. Attempts were made in the paper to analyze the agriculture of Pre-historic Sri Lanka including recent researches in the Island and its influence of understanding the cultural development of the country from Paleolithic Period to historical period. There have been several attempts during the past decades to understand the pre-historic life style of Sri Lanka. According to the archaeological evidences the environment has been used since two million years ago by human being in Sri Lanka. The life style was very simple in Paleolithic period and when Neolithic period it was complicated specially, their subsistence system changed. As the result of this, hunter-gatherers changed to farmers. Archaeology is a wide and multi-disciplinary science which seeks to understand past human life styles. This discipline has been used to re-read the pre historic period of Sri Lank