Kuala Lampur, April 21 -- Before the rise of agriculture, early humans were hunter-gatherers. They obtained food by hunting animals and foraging for wild plants, roots, and fruits.

But people began a gradual transition away from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle towards cultivating crops and raising animals for food around 12,000 years ago.

Sixty-five years ago when I was around 10 years old, I spent most of my free time as a hunter-gatherer. The activities included catching fish, frogs, spiders and birds, and gathering fruits, weeds and worms.

I grew up in Pandamaran next to Port Klang, a flat new village near muddy mangrove swamps where open ditches were dug on the ground next to roads to channel rainwater into the swamp, with the flow rev...