[muawiyah]

The city-state and much of the underpinnings of civilization (with cities, permanent government, writing, record keeping, etc.) are KNOWN to have originated in Mesopotamia.

The Sumerians who did the job were migratory pastoralists with great herds of sheep, goats, cattle and other animals.

They were replaced by Semites once all the heavy hauling had been done.

Agriculture was developed extensively in Syria (and along the Mediterranean Coast), Eastern Anatolia and later in Mesopotamia by the Semitic newcomers.

We are talking about thousands of years of work BTW ~ didn't happen overnight.

Oh, yes, the singular Semitic-speaking contribution to government was the creation of the First Nation ~ aka "Egypt". Not at all a casual undertaking and well worth praise, but even Egypt used a writing concept first developed by the Sumerians. East Asian developments lagged the West (meaning Mesopotamia and Eastern Mediterranean) by maybe a thousand years.

Recent discoveries in the Aleutians suggest that Japonica rice may well have been developed there first (along with the same heated floor/foundation system typical of ancient Korean settlements). Japonica was then taken to Asia by Aleuts and then propagated in China. Indicum was developed later along the upper reaches of the Ganges, but it's a separate species. American Indian "wild rice" is yet another group of species (somewhat related to Indicum and Japonica). As usual American Indians were developing many times more species of plants into useful agricultural products than Old World populations.

[Sherman Logan]

Oh, yes, the singular Semitic-speaking contribution to government was the creation of the First Nation ~ aka "Egypt".

Egypt was not Semitic.

The Semites' biggest contributions to history have been the alphabet and the religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

[Happy Rain]

That is the conventional wisdom—but this article's claim of “modern” husbandry some 8000 years ago beginning on the Western edge of the Balkan Peninsula conflicts with other claims of earliest agriculturally enabled cities like Jarmo or Jericho some 10000 to 8000 years ago—as physically recorded history with it's natural limits attest. There may be a an undiscovered or discovered and destroyed by Nazi archaeologists because of it's racial ramifications a Croatian Petra that predates Asian or African civilizations.
Like the former “missing link” Lucy proved—the jury is always out on human origins until it ain't.
Fun to look into though.