Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Neolithic Revolution began approximately 12,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent. This period marked a wide-scale transition from egalitarian hunter-gatherer lifestyles to settled agricultural communities.
Daniel Zohary identified wheat, barley, and rye as pioneer crops while flax, peas, chickpeas, bitter vetch, and lentils came later. Early crops included emmer, einkorn, and barley with spontaneous selection favoring strains that retained edible seeds longer during harvest.
The diffusion across Europe took about 2,500 years spanning 8500 to 6000 BP. Average spread speeds reached approximately one kilometer per year with Baltic regions penetrated around 5500 BP.
Nutritional standards of growing Neolithic populations proved inferior to those of foragers due to reliance on limited staple crops. Transition to cereal-based diets caused reductions in life expectancy and stature alongside increased infant mortality and infectious disease development.
V. Gordon Childe invented the term Neolithic Revolution in his 1936 book Man Makes Himself. The Oasis Theory proposed by Raphael Pumpelly in 1908 claimed drier climates forced community contraction before subsequent climate data suggested otherwise.