**Abstract**

Although modern man had developed long before the migration from Africa began ∼ 55,000 years ago, no agricultural societies developed until about ∼ 10,000 years ago. But in the next 5000 years, agricultures developed in several unrelated regions of the world. It was not a chance occurrence that new agricultures independently appeared in the same 5000 years. The question is what inhibited agriculture worldwide for 44,000 years and what changed ∼ 10,000 years ago? We suggest that a major factor influencing the development of agricultural societies was *climate stability*. From the experience of several independent cultures, we estimate that the development of agriculture needed about 2000 years of climate free from significant climate variations on time scales of a few centuries.

**Keywords:** origin of agriculture, climate stability, paleoclimate data, younger Dryas
