Answer:
b)early farmers who cultivated crops and domesticated animals
Explanation:
Agriculture originated in small centers around the world, but probably first occurred in the Fertile Crescent, a region of the Middle East that includes parts of what is now Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Jordan. The evidence of advanced agriculture here (crops, livestock, farming tools and villages) dates back to 11,000 years.
In the 1990s, most archaeologists concluded that agriculture in the Fertile Crescent began in Jordan and Israel, a region known as the South Levante. "The model was that everything started here and everything was spread out from here, perhaps including people," said Melinda A. Zeder, a senior scientist and researcher at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.
However, in recent years, Zeder and other archaeologists have questioned that consensus. His research suggests that the villages were inventing agriculture at several sites in the Fertile Crescent at about the same time. For example, in the Zagros Mountains of Iran, Zeder and his colleagues have found evidence of gradual domestication of wild goats over several centuries about 10,000 years ago.