The agrarian transformation was the beginning of a new way of life; it changed the way we lived and continues to influence us in today's society. It all began when groups of hunter-gatherers in Mesopotamia and the New World began settling in single locations instead of continually wandering in search of food. The ability to preserve food led to settlement and some other new customs such as using more advanced stages of food preparation (grinding grains) and, finally, the early stages of agriculture. Nomadic foragers originally followed flocks of sheep and goats and eventually began domesticating herd animals about 12,000 years ago. Hunter-gatherer groups of people began domesticating plants and animals after 12,000 BC, which marked the beginning of food production. The first plants domesticated during the transformation were emmer, einkorn and barley from the Near East, while teosinte (maize) and opuntia (prickly pear) were domesticated along with wild bean and squash in the New World. In China, domestic plants consisted of several types of millet, a type of Chinese cabbage (originally from the mustard family), and finally rice. While hunter-gatherers were sedentary and farmed by domesticating (Old World: mainly barley and wheat; New World: mainly corn and beans); nomadic gatherers domesticated flocks of animals; this created an opportunity for trade. Gatherers exchanged an animal with hunter-gatherers for a portion of their domesticated plants while traveling. This trade was in many ways the beginning of agricultural entrepreneurship and the types of agricultural production we see today. In the midst of the early times agricultural communities began to form, mak...... middle of paper ......ient Near East and North Africa." The Cambridge World History of Food. Eds. Kenneth F. Kiple and Kriemhild Coneè Ornelas. Cambridge University Press, 2000. Cambridge Histories Online. Cambridge University Press. Retrieved 8 April 2010. http://0search.eb. com.opac.library.csupomona.edu/eb/article-10769.Kreis, Steven "The History Guide." Ancient Western Asia and the Civilization of Mesopotamia. February 26, 2006. Retrieved April 8, 2010. http://www.noodletools. com/quickcite/citwww1.html.Thomas M. Whitmore, B. L. Turner II Annals of the Association of American Geographers, vol. 82, no. 3, The Americas before and after 1492: Current Geographical Research September 1992. Retrieved 8 April 2010 http://www.jstor.org/stable/2563353