Farming Started in Several Places at Once

[Big Bad Voodoo]

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/07/130705101629.htm

For decades archaeologists have been searching for the origins of agriculture. Their findings indicated that early plant domestication took place in the western and northern Fertile Crescent. In the July 5 edition of the journal Science, researchers from the University of Tübingen, the Tübingen Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Paleoenvironment, and the Iranian Center for Archaeological Research demonstrate that the foothills of the Zagros Mountains of Iran in the eastern Fertile Crescent also served as a key center for early domestication.

Evidence of Ancient Farming in Iran Discovered

http://www.livescience.com/37963-agriculture-arose-eastern-fertile-crescent.html

[lightly]

12,000 years ago .... ( earlier than the 6,000 years ago i was taught in grade school ) Maybe gardening developed in several areas independently. .. many things did? ... but i would think that successful gardening would have been been an accomplishment that would have spread very quickly, once developed. .. who knows.

http://archive.archa...efs/squash.html

" Earliest Agriculture in the New World Volume 50 Number 4, July/August 1997 by Spencer P.M. Harrington

A 10,000-year-old squash seed from Oaxaca. (Courtesy Science) [LARGER IMAGE]

Dating of squash seeds from a cave in Oaxaca, Mexico, has confirmed that plant domestication in the Americas began some 10,000 years ago. The new finding, reported by Smithsonian archaeologist Bruce Smith in the journal Science, indicates that planting began in the New World about the same time as in the Near East and China.

*snip*

"So far there is no evidence to suggest that New World people were cultivating anything but squash before 5,000 years ago. While Chinese and Near Eastern peoples appear to have shifted to a diversified agricultural economy within 1,000 years of the cultivation of their first crops, in the Americas the transition to an agricultural life-style appears to have taken much longer. Though Smith hesitates to predict when evidence for other early New World crops will emerge, he does admit that it "would seem unusual to have 5,000 years pass before corn and beans become domesticated."

... Indeed .

Edited July 7, 2013 by lightly

[Harte]

China:

The first evidence of agriculture appears in the archaeological record some 10,000 years ago. But the skills needed to cultivate and harvest crops weren't learned overnight. Scientists have traced these roots back to 23,000-year-old tools used to grind seeds, found mostly in the Middle East.

Now, research lead by Li Liu, a professor of Chinese archaeology at Stanford, reveals that the same types of tools were used to process seeds and tubers in northern China, setting China's agricultural clock back about 12,000 years and putting it on par with activity in the Middle East. Liu believes that the practices evolved independently, possibly as a global response to a changing climate.

Source

Very likely, agriculture itself is more than 20,000 years old:

Until recently researchers say the story of the origin of agriculture was one of a relatively sudden appearance of plant cultivation in the Near East around 10,000 years ago spreading quickly into Europe and dovetailing conveniently with ideas about how quickly language and population genes spread from the Near East to Europe. Initially, genetics appeared to support this idea but now cracks are beginning to appear in the evidence underpinning that model

Now a team led by Dr Robin Allaby from the University of Warwick have developed a new mathematical model that shows how plant agriculture actually began much earlier than first thought, well before the Younger Dryas (the last “big freeze” with glacial conditions in the higher latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere). It also shows that useful gene types could have actually taken thousands of years to become stable.

Up till now researchers believed in a rapid establishment of efficient agriculture which came about as artificial selection was easily able to dominate natural plant selection, and, crucially, as a consequence they thought most crops came from a single location and single domestication event.

However recent archaeological evidence has already begun to undermine this model pushing back the date of the first appearance of plant agriculture. The best example of this being the archaeological site Ohalo II in Syria where more than 90,000 plant fragments from 23,000 years ago show that wild cereals were being gathered over 10,000 years earlier than previously thought, and before the last glacial maximum (18,000-15,000 years ago).

Source

Harte

Edited July 8, 2013 by Harte

[Imaginarynumber1]

Ah, agriculture. Both the greatest and worst invention of H. sapiens.

[lightly]

China:

The first evidence of agriculture appears in the archaeological record some 10,000 years ago. But the skills needed to cultivate and harvest crops weren't learned overnight. Scientists have traced these roots back to 23,000-year-old tools used to grind seeds, found mostly in the Middle East.

Now, research lead by Li Liu, a professor of Chinese archaeology at Stanford, reveals that the same types of tools were used to process seeds and tubers in northern China, setting China's agricultural clock back about 12,000 years and putting it on par with activity in the Middle East. Liu believes that the practices evolved independently, possibly as a global response to a changing climate.

Source

Very likely, agriculture itself is more than 20,000 years old:

However recent archaeological evidence has already begun to undermine this model pushing back the date of the first appearance of plant agriculture. The best example of this being the archaeological site Ohalo II in Syria where more than 90,000 plant fragments from 23,000 years ago show that wild cereals were being gathered over 10,000 years earlier than previously thought, and before the last glacial maximum (18,000-15,000 years ago).

Source

Harte

hi Harte, but, is gathering wild grains and grinding them ... agriculture?

[jmccr8]

Hi Lightly,

In the article about China in the link that Harte supplied,they say that wild millet was gathered and ground.These seeds are small and would require some effort to gather,as the article states that either there was a shortage of other edibles or that the millet was abundant enough to gather usable quantities.I think that it may be reasonable to speculate that they were gathering and planting wild seed in a controlled environment at that time in history.

jmccr8

[lightly]

Hi Lightly,

In the article about China in the link that Harte supplied,they say that wild millet was gathered and ground.These seeds are small and would require some effort to gather,as the article states that either there was a shortage of other edibles or that the millet was abundant enough to gather usable quantities.I think that it may be reasonable to speculate that they were gathering and planting wild seed in a controlled environment at that time in history.

jmccr8

Hi j , yup, perfectly reasonable I think. They could see that seeds turned into plants ? Maybe it started off as a way to expand existing patches of millet ? Or maybe to import 'crops' to another area? It's fun to see the record of man's ingenuity being pushed further back in time.

[lilthor]

Very likely, agriculture itself is more than 20,000 years old:

Harte

Beginning of agriculture narrowed to +/- 10,000 years...not bad.

But we'll be able to pinpoint the END of agriculture with much greater precision:

http://www.anh-usa.org/pesticides-definitively-linked-to-bee-colony-collapse/

[Swede]

hi Harte, but, is gathering wild grains and grinding them ... agriculture?

Hi Lightly,

Just to add a note or two from the North American perspective.

The earliest documentation for the utilization of semi-domesticated native cultivars dates to the Archaic period. The genera/families involved include such groups as the chenopodium, amaranthus, and cucurbita. These native cultivars (particularly the former two) do well in disturbed soils environments and may have become more prevalent/available/harvested due to human activity.

As a matter of more refined definition, the practice of the utilization of semi-domesticated native cultivars is often referred to as horticulture in the professional literature.

If memory serves, the earliest utilization of the cucurbita in North America dates to circa 7000 BP. Interestingly enough, it is the current view that this genera was initially utilized for its container properties as opposed to its nutritional properties.

As always, am short on time, but will endeavor to provide more thorough documentation should you be interested in reading such.

.

[lightly]

Hiya Swede, appreciated as always. I web searched chenopodium,amaranthus, and cucurbita to learn a bit more and see what they looked like. Interesting, thanks for the educational input .

I was munching abundant wild 'canadian lettuce' shoots this spring in an area that had in recent years been greatly disturbed by human activity.

http://livingafield....WildLettuce.htm

Edited July 9, 2013 by lightly

[Harte]

hi Harte, but, is gathering wild grains and grinding them ... agriculture?

What ^they^ said.

Except Swede, of course. Nobody knows what the hell he said.

Harte

[Harte]

Hiya Swede, appreciated as always. I web searched chenopodium,amaranthus, and cucurbita to learn a bit more and see what they looked like. Interesting, thanks for the educational input .

I was munching abundant wild 'canadian lettuce' shoots this spring in an area that had in recent years been greatly disturbed by human activity.

http://livingafield....WildLettuce.htm

Poke Salad.

Carry it home in a tote sack.

Harte

[lightly]

What ^they^ said.

Except Swede, of course. Nobody knows what the hell he said.

Harte

I can always understand Swede's informative posts ... if i read them at least twice. ( a dictionary (and google) helps sometimes )

* Polk salad Annie, the gators got your granny.

Edited July 9, 2013 by lightly

[Big Bad Voodoo]

I can always understand Swede's informative posts ... if i read them at least twice. ( a dictionary (and google) helps sometimes )

And further reading list.