Farming Invented Twice In Middle East, Genomes Study Reveals

Nature ^ | June 20, 2016 | Ewen Callaway

[SunkenCiv]

Study of 44 ancient Middle Eastern genomes supports idea of independent farming revolutions in the Fertile Crescent.

Two Middle Eastern populations independently developed farming and then spread the technology to Europe, Africa and Asia, according to the genomes of 44 people who lived thousands of years ago in present-day Armenia, Turkey, Israel, Jordan and Iran.

...the research supports archaeological evidence about the multiple origins of farming, and represents the first detailed look at the ancestry of the individuals behind one of the most important periods in human history — the Neolithic revolution.

Some 11,000 years ago, humans living in the ancient Middle East region called the Fertile Crescent shifted from a nomadic existence, based on hunting game and gathering wild plants, to a more sedentary lifestyle that would later give rise to permanent settlements. Over thousands of years, these early farmers domesticated the first crops and transformed sheep, wild boars and other creatures into domestic animals.

Dozens of studies have examined the genetics of the first European farmers, who emigrated from the Middle East beginning some 8,000 years ago, but the hot climes of the Fertile Crescent had made it difficult to obtain ancient DNA from remains found there. Advances in extracting DNA from a tiny ear bone called the petrous allowed a team led by Iosif Lazaridis and David Reich, population geneticists at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, to analyse the genomes of the 44 Middle Eastern individuals, who lived between 14,000 and 3,500 years ago.

The team found stark differences between the genomes of Neolithic individuals from the southern Levant region, including Israel and Jordan, and those living across the Zagros Mountains in western Iran. The Zagros early farmers were instead more closely related to nearby hunter-gatherers who lived in the region before the Neolithic.

[frithguild]

Right! The big critters are not around due to extinction. Bands of aggressively singing humans less often scare the big carnivores away from dead or dying aurochs, mammoths, etc. to get a protein source that will last for quite some time, so thought and effort turns to gathering plant food sources, which naturally transitions over to planting. Farming makes sense only BECAUSE big critters are not occupying your time. To me, that farming began in different locations at the same is not a surprise. This fact generally time supports this idea. We will probably find that farming also began in the far east in temporal parallel.

[married21]

I read the title wrong again: I thought it was about studying gnomes and early agriculture.

That would have been more fun.