Mark wrote
> 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.
Mark, 10,000 years ago (8,000 BCE) most of the Glacial Ice had
already
melted. Sea levels that had been 150 metres below the current level
at 18,000 BCE were only about 23-27 metres below their current level.
While this had a huge effect on shallow sloping continental crusts
(eg. the North Sea, the Sahul and Sunda Shelf, Beringia etc), the
shoreline of the Eastern Mediterranean sloped pretty steeply, even at
the Orontes delta mouth (in Syria, not in Turkey).
Evidence is that farming began on the wetter slopes of the Taurus,
Anti-Taurus and northern Zagros mountains. These remained damp in
both wet periods, and in the dry as well, so allowing the wild
ancestors of domesticated crops to survive
John