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Archeologists excavating at the Chalcolithic site of Tel Tsaf in the Jordan Valley, Israel, have discovered one of the earliest examples of fruit tree cultivation worldwide, demonstrating that olive (Olea europaea) and common fig (Ficus carica) horticulture was practiced as early as 7,000 years ago.Today, the olive is considered the most prominent and probably the economically most important fruit tree of the Mediterranean Basin.Cultivation caused its distribution to expand into areas otherwise beyond its natural habitats...The charcoal assemblage of Tel Tsaf provides the earliest evidence of olive cultivation outside its natural distribution.It also offers evidence for early cultivation of common...

What do Fig Newtons and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches have in common? Listen to this preview of this week's podcast to find out — and then check out the full episode at https://t.co/t11Fa0CorE or wherever you get your podcasts. pic.twitter.com/AfL018UA4h— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) April 7, 2020

In a land flowing with milk and honey, what kinds of food made up the ancient Jewish diet? What did people eat and drink in Roman Palestine? Susan Weingarten guides readers through a menu of the first millennium C.E. in her article "Biblical Archaeology 101: The Ancient Diet of Roman Palestine," published in the March/April 2019 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review. Although it is difficult to reconstruct the diet of the average person in Palestine during the Roman and Late Antique periods, Weingarten, as both a food historian and an archaeologist, is well equipped for the task. Using archaeological remains...

More than 4,000 years ago builders carved out the entire surface of a naturally pyramid-shaped promontory on the Greek island of Keros. They shaped it into terraces covered with 1,000 tonnes of specially imported gleaming white stone to give it the appearance of a giant stepped pyramid rising from the Aegean: the most imposing manmade structure in all the Cyclades archipelago... Archaeologists from three different countries involved in an ongoing excavation have found evidence of a complex of drainage tunnels -- constructed 1,000 years before the famous indoor plumbing of the Minoan palace of Knossos on Crete -- and traces...

Was fig first fruit of man's agricultural endeavours? By Roger Highfield, Science Editor (Filed: 02/06/2006) The dawn of agriculture may have come with the domestication of fig trees near Jericho some 11,400 years ago, archaeologists report today. The discovery of ancient carbonised figs suggests that fruit, rather than grains that are traditionally thought to have heralded agriculture, may yield the earliest evidence of purposeful planting. The figs date back roughly 1,000 years before wheat, barley and legumes were domesticated in the region, making the fruit trees the oldest known domesticated crop, a team reports today in the journal Science. Nine...

WASHINGTON --Gourmets savoring their roasted figs with goat cheese may not realize it, but they're tasting history. Archaeologists report that they have found evidence that ancient people grew fig trees some 11,400 years ago, making the fruit the earliest domesticated crop. The find dates use of figs some 1,000 years before the first evidence that crops such as wheat, barley and legumes were being cultivated in the Middle East. Remains of the ancient fruits were found at Gilgal I, a village site in the Jordan Valley north of ancient Jericho, Ofer Bar-Yosef of Harvard University and Mordechai E. Kislev and...

Early Fig Farming Scientists tracing the origins of agriculture have followed the trail of cultivated grains like wheat and barley back to about 10,500 years ago in the Near East . Now a new study reported in the 2 Jun 2006 Science suggests that fig trees could have been the first domesticated crop, preceding cereals by about a thousand years. Kislev et al. ( http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/312/5778/1372) described the remains of figs found in several archaeological sites in the Jordan Valley as early as about 11,400 years ago. The carbonized fruits represent a variety of fig in which the fruit forms and...

Israeli archaeologists have uncovered dramatic evidence of what they believe are the earliest known attempts at agriculture, 11,000 years before the generally recognised advent of organised cultivation. The study examined more than 150,000 examples of plant remains recovered from an unusually well preserved hunter-gatherer settlement on the shores of the Sea of Galilee in northern Israel. Previously, scientists had believed that organised agriculture in the Middle East, including animal husbandry and crop cultivation, had begun in the late Holocene period – around 12,000 BC – and later spread west through Europe.

The team compiled a database of plant remains extracted from Bronze and Iron Ages sites in the southern Levant, both Philistine and non-Philistine... The species they brought are all cultivars that had not been seen in Israel previously... edible parts of the opium poppy (Papaver somniferum) which originates in western Europe; the sycamore tree (Ficus sycomorus), whose fruits are known to be cultivated in the eastern Mediterranean, especially Egypt, and whose presence in Israel as a locally grown tree is first attested to in the Iron Age by the presence of its fruit; and finally, cumin (Cuminum cyminum), a spice...

PARIS - One-upping the United States, France nearly doubled its aid pledge for tsunami victims to $57 million Thursday and briefly claimed the role as leading donor nation, following barbs from Washington about French generosity. AP Photo AFP Slideshow: Asian Tsunami Disaster But Britain quickly topped France by more than tripling its donation to $95 million and Sweden promised $75.5 million. Spain's Cabinet, meanwhile, approved a $68 million package, although about a fifth was in loans rather than outright grants. Since Sunday's huge earthquake off Indonesia and ensuing giant waves around the Indian Ocean, the United States has announced an...

Horse Manure is not Figs, Mr. Davis Well, today was your last day to sell a few figs, Mr. Davis. You’ve been shining them up as figs for so long, pumping those fists, pointing them fingers, high five’n with your buds at the L.A. Times, and just what were those things you’ve been picking up and shinin’ as figs, Mr. Davis? You think, anyone wants your little figs? . . . Now? . . . . . . Governor? Your progressives were always talking about revolution. Revolution this, revolution that – but your progressives would never invite the regular people...