Credit: George Willcox/CNRS
Posted on 03/31/2006 9:49:10 AM PST by SunkenCiv
Archaeobotanist George Willcox of the National Center for Scientific Research in Lyon, France, and plant geneticist Ken-ichi Tanno of the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature in Kyoto, Japan, examined nearly 10,000 wheat spikelets--the flowering part of the wheat plant that is dispersed when it reproduces--that were unearthed during archaeological excavations. The researchers focused on four settlements of various ages in northern Syria and southeastern Turkey, where wheat was first domesticated. They could only tell for sure whether the spikelets were domesticated or wild in 804 of the samples. Nevertheless, there was a clear trend: Over nearly 3000 years, the earlier sites had fewer domesticated spikelets, and the later sites had more... Archaeobotanist Gordon Hillman of the Institute of Archaeology at University College London, who was one of the first researchers to suggest a rapid transition from wild plant gathering to farming, says that he is "very impressed" with the paper. But Amy Bogaard, an archaeobotanist at the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom, cautions against drawing firm conclusions because she says the dataset is limited. Nevertheless, Bogaard says, there's now more evidence that early farmers were growing wild plants before they were fully domesticated.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencenow.sciencemag.org ...
Credit: George Willcox/CNRS
Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on or off the
"Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list or GGG weekly digest
-- Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)
Even now, those amber waves of grain look pretty tame and friendly, but ya better be careful turning your back on them...
I ran across an article the other day that had the original barley domestication and canine domestication as happening in the same 1000 year period(10,000-9,000BCE). I'll see if I can scare it up again.
Multirow barley (cultivated kind) has been found which RC dated to 14000 yr BP.
I've read that one of the most important changes was the one that made the wheat grains stay on the stalk instead of falling off prior to harvest.
Barley makes beer. Beer is good. Beer induces people to settle down and farm. Desire for more beer induces innovations in agricultural technology. The cycle becomes self-perpetuating.
Here, Gentlmen, is the history of the Neolithic period in a nutshell.
"...I've read that one of the most important changes was the one that made the wheat grains stay on the stalk instead of falling off prior to harvest...."
This is hardly surprising. People garnish what they may. They save a portion of the harvest for seed, and they will harvest more of what stays on the stalk, than what shatters.
So this is what an expensive education, and fat public paychecks nets one:
"Early people were too stupid to quickly learn to grow only the domesticated varieties, rather than wild ones." Maybe they should have bought their seed at Co-op, instead of stubbornly saving, selecting, and replanting from whatever came up. Just where does she think the domestic varieties came from?
Wild varieties preceded domestic varieties; therefore, undomesticated types had to be grown first. Altogether now: "Duh!"
Oh, and don't forget to pay me on your way out.
Maybe in 10 or 20 years, they'll find scientific evidence that farmers raised crappy, stunted corn, before they raised pure stands of 16-row, super-sweet bicolor corn.
[rimshot!]
Well put.
Beer is why the Mayflower stopped at Plymouth. The Pilgrims were running low on beer, and they needed to stop for a few weeks to put up a new batch.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
