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Prehistoric Row Erupts Over Hunter-Gatherer Riddle
The Age ^ | 2-19-2004

Posted on 02/20/2004 12:04:12 PM PST by blam

Prehistoric row erupts over hunter-gatherer riddle

February 19, 2004 - 12:22PM

A team of Australian archaeologists have sparked an academic row by claiming to have solved the riddle of a missing 1,000 years in human prehistory.

The scientists from Melbourne's La Trobe University have found remnants of grains on the shore of the Dead Sea in Jordan that they believe help fill the 1,000-year gap in our knowledge of man's transition from nomad to farmer.

But not everyone agrees, and the Australian team is now muscling up for an academic arm wrestle next month with the exponents of different theories in France.

The debate is all about the period when man shifted from being a nomadic hunter-gatherer to settling down as a sedentary farmer.

Conventional wisdom is that the transitional period, known as the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) period, finished about 9,200 BC.

But La Trobe's Archaeology Program Coordinator Dr Phillip Edwards says the university's discovery of wild ancestors to domestic crops in Jordan now proves the PPNA in fact lasted until 8,300 BC.

This period saw "pre-domestication cultivation" of barley, wheat, pulses and pistachio nuts.

"The theory holds that our forebears certainly began planting crops from about 9250 BC, but the grains they planted for around 1,000 years continued to be wild varieties, leading to the mistaken conclusion that they had been gathered in the wild during those 1,000 years and not cultivated," he said.

This view remains a minority one, with most archaeologists still accepting that man had not begun farming cultivated crops at this time, so the stage is set for a good old academic stoush.

The arena for the bloodletting will be the Pre-Pottery Neolithic Workshop at Frejus, France next month.

Members of the La Trobe team will feature in a documentary on the origins of farming life, Stories from the Stone Age, which will screen on the ABC later in the year.

- AAP


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: agriculture; animalhusbandry; dietandcuisine; domestication; godsgravesglyphs; helixmakemineadouble; huntergatherer; huntergatherers; prehistoric; riddle; row

1 posted on 02/20/2004 12:04:12 PM PST by blam
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To: farmfriend
Ping.
2 posted on 02/20/2004 12:04:41 PM PST by blam
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To: blam
Well...I for one an just going to sit on the sidelines and watch this fight.

I hope someone looks into liquid storage container development. Ya have to store all that beer somewhere. Man grows grain...man makes beer. Man needs big vessels to store beer. Ergo pottery evolves in storage devices.

Beer...its a History Thing.

3 posted on 02/20/2004 12:10:49 PM PST by Khurkris (Ranger On...)
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To: blam
The arena for the bloodletting will be the Pre-Pottery Neolithic Workshop at Frejus, France next month.

Let the games begin...

4 posted on 02/20/2004 12:12:09 PM PST by TADSLOS (Right Wing Infidel since 1954)
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To: blam
BLEACHER BUMP (I am just a spectator in this one.)
5 posted on 02/20/2004 12:13:31 PM PST by LiteKeeper
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To: blam
"The theory holds that our forebears certainly began planting crops from about 9250 BC, but the grains they planted for around 1,000 years continued to be wild varieties, leading to the mistaken conclusion that they had been gathered in the wild during those 1,000 years and not cultivated," he said.

This view remains a minority one, with most archaeologists still accepting that man had not begun farming cultivated crops at this time, so the stage is set for a good old academic stoush.

Are some suggesting that we went straight from gathering in the wild to cultivating genetically engineered crops? Doesn't it seem logical that we would have begun cultivating the wild crops that were available, and later learned to graft and otherwise engineer the crops? Unless.... Space aliens popped in and gave us more modern crops. Yeah, that's the ticket.

6 posted on 02/20/2004 12:27:32 PM PST by BykrBayb (Temporary tagline. Applied to State of New Jersey for permanent tagline (12/24/03).)
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To: blam
Maybe it's just me but I'm not surprised that one might find evidence of agricultural activity of nomadic hunter-gatherers at the water's edge or the base of impassable mountain ranges.
7 posted on 02/20/2004 12:31:01 PM PST by Old Professer
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To: TADSLOS

Atouk

8 posted on 02/20/2004 1:26:26 PM PST by yankeedame ("Oh, I can take it but I'd much rather dish it out.")
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To: Khurkris
Beer, bread, and cheese. The basics of civilization. The cause of civilization. Blame civilization on our microbial friends.
9 posted on 02/20/2004 1:31:43 PM PST by RightWhale (Repeal the law of the excluded middle)
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To: Old Professer
"Maybe it's just me but I'm not surprised that one might find evidence of agricultural activity of nomadic hunter-gatherers at the water's edge or the base of impassable mountain ranges."

Yup, I'd look around the Black Sea when it was still a fresh water lake. It'd be 550 ft underwater now.

10 posted on 02/20/2004 2:41:46 PM PST by blam
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To: Old Professer
An Origin Of New World Agriculture In Coastal Ecuador.

Rainforest Researchers Hit Paydirt (Farming 11k Years Ago In South America)

11 posted on 02/20/2004 2:46:28 PM PST by blam
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To: blam; *Gods, Graves, Glyphs; A.J.Armitage; abner; adam_az; AdmSmith; Alas Babylon!; ...
Gods, Graves, Glyphs
List for articles regarding early civilizations , life of all forms, - dinosaurs - etc.

Let me know if you wish to be added or removed from this ping list.

12 posted on 02/20/2004 5:18:48 PM PST by farmfriend ( Isaiah 55:10,11)
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To: blam
It seems kinda pointless to me for them to fight over a 1,000-year period which falls into a time frame when carbon-dating has an error margin of at least about 1,000 years :) To quote my ancient Near Eastern history textbook:

"Recent use of dendrochronology for calibration of radiocarbon-derived dates suggests that they deviate increasingly from actual calendar dates, from an error of about 200 years at 1000 B.C. up to an error of about 900 years at 5,000 radiocarbon years B.C. . .Although calibration curves are designed to bring radiocarbon dates in line with actual dates, the limits of these curves currently do not extend earlier than about 5200 B.C."

A. Bernard Knapp, The History and Culture of Ancient Western Asia and Egypt, Belmont, California: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1988, 7

13 posted on 02/20/2004 5:54:56 PM PST by Fedora
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To: Fedora
I have come to the conclusion that scientists have to argue so that they can continue to be funded to "prove" their (contrarian) theory.
14 posted on 02/21/2004 10:44:43 AM PST by marsh2
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To: marsh2
> I have come to the conclusion that scientists have to argue so that they can continue to be funded to "prove" their (contrarian) theory.

LOL! I have come to a similar conclusion :) My observation is that scientists and other scholars working on their Ph.D. are under constant peer pressure to propose a "new" theory to justify their dissertation, which cultivates a contrarian attitude. Once they actually get their Ph.D. this attitude carries over into their work, where the funding issue reinforces it.
15 posted on 02/21/2004 12:29:24 PM PST by Fedora
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To: Fedora
same reason public school children are subjected to new curriculum after new curriculum.
new math, whole language, gender equity, ...
you cannot get your doctorate in education without one.
luckily for them since the average parent only has a 5-8 year life in any zone (2 kids, 2-3 years apart) the educators can re-cycle the usual suspects
back to phonics, math manipulates, character education ...
and zig-zag along
16 posted on 02/28/2004 5:14:29 AM PST by billl
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17 posted on 08/15/2008 11:17:44 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/_______Profile hasn't been updated since Friday, May 30, 2008)
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