Re: First Farmers in Turkey

Christopher Gwinn wrote:

> Does anyone have any thoughts on the following article, which

appeared on

> Discovering Archaeology on June 1st 2000?

Thanks Christopher. This seems to relate to what I have been
understanding too in the archaeological literature. The long
equation
of the Natufians as the first farmers seems to be being replaced by a
view that they adopted their technology from the North, coming out of
the region of Turkey. First obsidian trade routes, then grain
genetics, now chick peas... the evidence is accumulating for an
origin
of farming amongst peoples whose languages are now extinct
(Hurro-Urartuan? Hattic? perhaps).

Regards

John

> ______________________________________
>
> The Cradle of Agriculture?
> New Evidence Moves the World's
> First Farmers into Turkey
> by Reagan Duplisea
>
> While it is widely believed that agriculture began in the Levant,

the region

> spanning the eastern tip of the Mediterranean, new research may have
> narrowed down the location - and moved it northward.
> In what is known as the Fertile Crescent - the region nurtured by

the Jordan

> River on the west and the Tigris and Euphrates in the east - the

oldest

> civilizations flourished. And here, in an epic advance that made

these

> ancient civilizations possible, plants were domesticated and

agriculture was

> born.
> The cradle of agriculture generally has been placed in the Jordan

Valley of

> the southern Levant (today's Israel and Jordan). But work by Simcha
> Lev-Yadun of Israel's Agricultural Research Organization and

colleagues

> suggest the first farms may have been farther north, between the

Tigris and

> Euphrates rivers in what is today northeastern Turkey and northern

Syria.

> Wild progenitors of the main Neolithic founder crops (einkorn

wheat,
emmer

> wheat, barley, lentil, pea, chickpea, bitter vetch, and flax) are

found

> together only in this small core area of the Fertile Crescent.
> Lev-Yadun reports that wild chickpea especially is extremely rare,

yet it

> was a staple crop of Neolithic life 10,000 years ago. Agriculture,
> therefore, probably began in an area where chickpea is native.
> Archaeological evidence shows that the earliest known farming

settlements of

> the Fertile Crescent were in this core area.
> Also, the limited genetic variability of these crops implies that

they were

> domesticated only once - rather than by several different cultures

at

> roughly the same time. Evidence of domesticated crops in the core

area dates

> to about 10,000 years ago, while the earliest signs of farming

elsewhere are

> about 9,300 years ago.
> Neolithic sites discovered in the core area indicate that a society

with

> plenty of food thrived there. In sites such as Cayonu, Novali Cori,

and

> Gobekli Tepe, impressive architecture, images, and artifacts have

been

> found. Settlement sites are also larger in this area than many

others of the

> same time in other parts of the Fertile Crescent.
> Lev-Yadun and colleagues Avi Gopher of Tel Aviv University and

Shahal Abbo

> of Hebrew University reported their research in Friday's (June 2)

edition of

> the journal Science.
>
>
>
> REAGAN DUPLISEA is a writer for Scientific American Discovering

Archaeology.