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Neolithic Revolution

2014-3-6 21:25| view publisher: amanda| views: 2003| wiki(57883.com) 0 : 0

description: Identifying the exact origin of agriculture remains problematic because the transition from hunter-gatherer societies began thousands of years before the invention of writing.Anthropological and archa ...
Identifying the exact origin of agriculture remains problematic because the transition from hunter-gatherer societies began thousands of years before the invention of writing.
Anthropological and archaeological evidence from sites across Southwest Asia and North Africa indicate use of wild grain (e.g., from the c. 20,000 BCE site of Ohalo II in Israel, many Natufian sites in the Levant and from sites along the Nile in the 10th millennium BCE). There is even evidence of planned cultivation and trait selection: grains of rye with domestic traits have been recovered from Epi-Palaeolithic (10,000+ BCE) contexts at Abu Hureyra in Syria, but this appears to be a localised phenomenon resulting from cultivation of stands of wild rye, rather than a definitive step towards domestication.
Previously, archaeobotanists/paleoethnobotanists had traced the selection and cultivation of specific food plant characteristics in search of the origins of agriculture. One notable example is the semi-tough rachis (and larger seeds) traced to just after the Younger Dryas (about 9500 BCE) in the early Holocene in the Levant region of the Fertile Crescent. However, studies have demonstrated monophyletic characteristics attained without any human intervention, implying that what some may perceive as domestication among rachis could have occurred quite naturally.[14] In fact, the timescale insisted upon for rachis domestication (approx. 3,000 years) coincidentally has been demonstrated to directly coincide with the statistically generated timeframe numerically modeled that would be required for monophyly to be reached if a population were simply abandoned and left to only natural demands, implying that if any sort of human intervention had occurred at all then the timescale insisted upon should be considerably shorter (than 3,000 years).[14]
It was not until after 9500 BCE that the eight so-called founder crops of agriculture appear: first emmer and einkorn wheat, then hulled barley, peas, lentils, bitter vetch, chick peas and flax. These eight crops occur more or less simultaneously on PPNB sites in the Levant, although the consensus is that wheat was the first to be grown and harvested on a significant scale.
At around the same time (9400 BCE), another study argues, parthenocarpic fig trees appear to have been domesticated.[15] The simplicity associated with cutting branches off fig trees and replanting them alongside wild cereals owes to the basis of this argument.[16]
By 7000 BCE, sowing and harvesting reached Mesopotamia, and there, in the fertile soil just north of the Persian Gulf, Sumerians systematized it and scaled it up. By 8000 BCE farming was entrenched on the banks of the Nile River. About this time, agriculture was developed independently in the Far East, probably in China, with rice rather than wheat as the primary crop. Maize was first domesticated, probably from teosinte, in the Americas around 3000-2700 BCE, though there is some archaeological evidence of a much older development. The potato, the tomato, the pepper, squash, several varieties of bean, and several other plants were also developed in the New World, as was quite extensive terracing of steep hillsides in much of Andean South America. Agriculture was also independently developed on the island of New Guinea.[17]
Recent discoveries in Europe, such as Cyprus and mainland Greece has shown that farming started early in south east Europe. In Franchthi Cave in Greece there are no certain gathering of plant foods attested before ca. 11,000 BCE, although large numbers of seeds of the Boraginaceae family may come from plants gathered to furnish soft bedding or for the dye which their roots may have supplied. First appearing at ca. 11,000 BCE are lentils, vetch, pistachios, and almonds. Then ca. 10,500 BCE appear a few very rare seeds of wild oats and wild barley. Neither wild oats nor wild barley become at all common until ca. 7000 BCE[18][19] in Cyprus. The oldest agricultural settlement ever found on a Mediterranean island has been discovered in Klimonas. between 9100 and 8600 BCE organized communities were farming and they build half-buried mud brick communal buildings, 10 meters in diameter and surrounded by dwellings, that must have been used to store the village's harvests. Remains of carbonized seeds of local plants and grains introduced from the Levantine coasts (including emmer, one of the first Middle Eastern wheats) have also been found in Klimonas.[20]
There is evidence of emmer and einkorn wheat, barley, sheep, goats and pigs that suggest a food producing economy in Greece and the Aegean by 7000 BCE.[21] Archaeological evidence from various sites on the Iberian peninsula suggest the domestication of plants and animals between 6000 and 4500 BCE.[21] Céide Fields in Ireland, consisting of extensive tracts of land enclosed by stone walls, date to 3500 BCE and are the oldest known field systems in the world.[22][23] The horse was domesticated in Ukraine around 4000 BCE.[24]
In China, rice and millet were domesticated by 8000 BCE, followed by the beans mung, soy and azuki. In the Sahel region of Africa local rice and sorghum were domestic by 5000 BCE. Local crops were domesticated independently in West Africa[citation needed] and possibly in Ethiopia. In New Guinea, ancient Papuan peoples are thought to have begun practicing agriculture around 7000 BCE. They began domesticating sugarcane and root crops. Pigs may also have been domesticated around this time. By 3000 BCE, Papuan agriculture was characterized by water control for irrigation.[25][page needed] Evidence of the presence of wheat and some legumes in the 6th millennium BCE have been found in the Indus Valley. Oranges were cultivated in the same millennium. The crops grown in the valley around 4000 BCE were typically wheat, peas, sesame seed, barley, dates and mangoes. By 3500 BCE cotton growing and cotton textiles were quite advanced in the valley. By 3000 BCE farming of rice had started. Other monsoon crops of importance of the time was cane sugar. By 2500 BCE, rice was an important component of the staple diet in Mohenjodaro near the Arabian Sea. By this time the Indians had large cities with well-stocked granaries. Three regions of the Americas independently domesticated corn, squashes, potato and sunflowers.

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