Humans Took 1000 Years To Tame Wild Plants

ABC.Net ^ | 4-13-2004 | Anna Salleh

[blam]

Humans took 1000 years to tame wild plants

Anna Salleh
ABC Science Online
Tuesday, 13 April 2004

The Dead Sea Plain dig in Jordan. The base of a curved stone wall can be seen in front of the researcher (Image: P Edwards)

Remnants of ancient barley, wheat, figs and pistachios nearly 10,000 years old are helping to solve the mystery about how and when nomadic hunter-gatherers became sedentary farmers.

A team led by Australian archaeologist Dr Phillip Edwards of Melbourne's La Trobe University said its findings in the Middle East suggested humans went through a 1000-year phase of cultivating wild plants before they began breeding plants in earnest.

Edwards told ABC Science Online the research had been accepted for publication in the French journal Paléorient.

The team has been investigating remnants at a site near the Dead Sea in Jordan that represents what archaeologists call the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) period, when humans began to establish settlements.

Scientists have dated the site to about 9600 to 9300 years old. Archaeologists refer to that as 9600 to 9300 years before present (BP), where 'present' is defined as 1950 AD.

Until relatively recently, the PPNA was also generally accepted as the time when humans began to domesticate plants.

But Edwards said the major flaw in this argument was that any archaeological evidence of plants from PPNA sites were not conclusive evidence of domesticated varieties.

"That left us with a puzzle," said Edwards. "Villages really intensified and grew in this period, and if it wasn't due to a new food base then everybody was left with the question of what caused it."

Archaeobotany to the rescue

The La Trobe team's archaeobotanist, PhD student John Meadows, studied ancient barley seeds from the Dead Sea site.

While they were larger than wild types, they were not as large as fully domesticated types found in the next archaeological period, the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB).

This was one piece of evidence, argued Edwards, that suggested there was a period before domestication called "pre-domestication cultivation".

"What we think now is that they were cultivating plants that were still morphologically wild, which is why we call it pre-domestication cultivation," Edwards said.

"They were still hunters, still collected plants but what we now think is that they had added part-time cultivation of wheat, barley and some legumes."

Other features of the site support this interpretation, said Edwards.

"It was a kind of natural laboratory that crystallised the issue."

He said the fact that the site was very flat and had an ancient spring suggested the grains of barley and wheat found there were grown there. Mortar and pestles and other grinding equipment were also found there.

Edwards said other research from a PPNA site in Syria had found weeds associated with cultivation.

Part-time hunter-gatherers

Together with this evidence of a sedentary life, other evidence suggested the people at the Dead Sea site were also part hunter-gatherers.

Numerous figs and pistachios remnants found there were unlikely to have grown there because the site would have been very dry and saline at the time, said Edwards. Instead, he said, they would have been gathered from the hills in season.

The La Trobe team's research has also added to archaeologists' understanding of when exactly the PPNA ended.

The period is generally regarded as starting at 10,300 BP and ending at 9600 BP. But Edward's team suggested an ending of about 9300 to 9200 BP.

Research from a site in Israel presented at a recent conference in France suggested the next period, the PPNB, began at 9400 to 9300 BP.

[blam]

Ping.

[VadeRetro]

Pre-pottery Neolithic Ping!

[Tacis]

I understand that Kennedy and the other crap weasels are planning, if it will make Bush look bad, to demand a hearing on why this took so long.

[jolie560]

Histories of farming and gardening are interesting in their recording of many cases of crop failure and many cases of crop success.

The weather and plundering had much effect on the success of agriculture.

[ShadowDancer]

I love these posts of yours. Thanks.

[kitkat]

BUMP for interesting reading later, but I have to go find out which TV station is carrying our President's speech right now. Blam, this article sounds fascinating.

[CobaltBlue]

Coincidentally I just got a copy of "The Origin of Fruits and Vegetables" today from Amazon.com.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0789306565/qid=1081900730/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-2816519-9044641?v=glance&s=books

Just started reading it, but one of the things I've learned so far is that the earliest cultivated fruits and vegetables, not surprisingly, are ones that are very easy to cultivate by transplanting cuttings of stems or roots, like figs, grapes, pomegranates, olives, and dates.

Of course, climate matters, too. Olives are not cold-tolerant, but hate tropical climates even worse than a little cold, so that where they grow essentially defines the Mediterranean climate.

If you are interested in the history of horticulture (I am a sucker for this stuff) you might like this book.

[kitkat]

***I understand that Kennedy and the other crap weasels are planning, if it will make Bush look bad, to demand a hearing on why this took so long.***

Yup! Same thing with Noah's ark. First they said Noah couldn't build it without multi-lateral approval. Then when he did it anyway, they blamed him for not building it sooner and saving all the people.

[EggsAckley]

I've always wondered who it was who first figured out how to prepare an artichoke. I mean, they are such nasty plants when raw that it's amazing that someone thought to cook them. Maybe they were very, very hungry. LOL!

[farmfriend]

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.

[Dog Gone]

I'm amazed that agriculture ever existed at the Dead Sea.

The "Land of Milk and Honey" is the biggest spin job of all time.

[bannie]

Humans took 1000 years to tame wild plants

Damned weeds...

[bannie]

Fun stuff.

I took a course in "Plagues and People" several years ago...same kind of fun.

[SoCal Pubbie]

"Scientists have dated the site to about 9600 to 9300 years old. Archaeologists refer to that as 9600 to 9300 years before present (BP), where 'present' is defined as 1950 AD. "

I've noticed a real trend away from dating history by using the terms B.C or A.D. Often the term BCE (before the common era) is used, which is really ridiculous, since it is the same as B.C. except it does not name the birth of Christ directly. Sort of like renaming Christmas break the "Winter Holiday".

Now this BP is not only embarrassingly PC but more confusing to boot. Calling 1950 the "present" means in order to figure out how old a given date is, you have to add the number of years since 1950, then add that to the date. Since we are still dating on years based on the convention of the birth of Jesus, what's the point?

[PatrickHenry]

PING. [This list is for the evolution side of evolution threads, and some other science topics like cosmology. Long-time list members get all pings, but can request evo-only status. New additions will be evo-only, but can request all pings. FReepmail me to be added or dropped. Specify all pings or you'll get evo-pings only.]

[Lurking Libertarian]

I've noticed a real trend away from dating history by using the terms B.C or A.D. Often the term BCE (before the common era) is used, which is really ridiculous, since it is the same as B.C. except it does not name the birth of Christ directly. Sort of like renaming Christmas break the "Winter Holiday".

In this field, the practice is much older than recent political correctness. Jewish scholars were the first to use "BCE" and "CE" --probably as long ago as the 19th century--in order to use the same dates as everyone else without explicitly acknowledging Christianity. Moslems picked this up from Jews. Historians and archaeologists who study the Middle East then picked it up, in order to avoid offending the Jews and Moslems they have to deal with in order to get permission for their digs. So in Middle eastern history, you will find that BCE/CE dates have been common for over 50 years.

[blam]

"I've always wondered who it was who first figured out how to prepare an artichoke."

I would start your search for that person around Castroville.

[jolie560]

I wonder, whenever I boil them, who figured out how to eat artichokes in the first place. My best guess is that it was an accident----somone threw the thing into a boiling pot while no one else was looking.

[Shryke]

Artichokes? That's nothing. Please look into the delicacies enjoyed in Asia, such a a rotting egg/cabage/etc. UNBELIEVABLE what people can eat.