Re: [TIED] First Farmers in Turkey

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.

 

I remind everyone that, 10,000 years ago, sea level was considerably lower than today. My gut instinct is to find first agriculture at the then Orantes delta somewhere out there in the Med.

 

Yes. Chickpeas.

----- Original Message -----

From: Christopher Gwinn

To: cybalist@egroups.com

Sent: Saturday, June 03, 2000 6:59 PM

Subject: [TIED] First Farmers in Turkey

Does anyone have any thoughts on the following article, which appeared on
Discovering Archaeology on June 1st 2000?
______________________________________

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.