Around the world, on separate continents that had no contact with each other, multiple groups of ancient humans invented farming more or less simultaneously — and scientists still don't know how or why.

Known to archaeologists and anthropologists as the Neolithic Revolution, the discovery of this historical head-scratcher is by no means new. Nevertheless, it continues to fascinate folks like Michael Marshall, an author at New Scientist who pondered this phenomenon in a new piece about this quantum leap in human development.

As a 2023 PNAS paper cited by Marshall suggests, the things scientists do know about this incredible happenstance are what make it so captivating.