Origins of Agriculture had Multiple Roots, New Analysis of Ancient Plants Finds

Among a cache of ancient stone tools and animal bones in the Zargos mountains in eastern Iran, archaeologists found a rich history of ancient plant remains. The find occurred much farther east than previous sites of original Fertile Crescent agriculture, which suggests the region also served as a seed for the advent of agriculture and that agriculture arose in many areas simultaneously.

Analysis of the artifacts indicates that agriculture, in the form of cultivating cereal grains, was present in the region at least 11,700 years ago. The find adds the base of the Zargos mountains to the short list of places believed to pioneer the development of agriculture.

In the 1950s, evidence of agriculture was unearthed in Jericho, Isreal, which led researchers to believe that agriculture first arose in Israel and Jordan, LiveScience reported. But since then, evidence of early agriculture has been found in several countries in the Fertile Crescent region, including Turkey, Iraq and Syria.

Simone Riehl, who conducts archaeological work for the University of Tübingen, found plant remains at the Zargos mountain site spanned a period of more than 2,000 years. Botanical examination of the samples allowed researchers to see a clear progression from crude plant management to true plant domestication. The site is much further east than any other known sites linked to the earliest evidence of agriculture. Along with previous work from other nearby regions, the latest research suggests that farming began spreading simultaneously over a widespread area.

With no written record, it is impossible to say whether agricultural ideas spread by word of mouth across populations, if techniques were introduced by migrating peoples or if people came up with the same ideas at the same time.

But what seems clear, the researchers say, is that there is no single point of origin for the dawn of human agriculture.

"There is not just one village where you can say, 'This is where domestication occurred,'" Nicholas Conrad, head of the archaeological team that made the new discoveries, told Discovery News. "It wasn't as if the development of agriculture was like someone flipped a light in one place and from that point of origin, agriculture spread. It's a process that occurred in a whole range of places."

Conrad and his colleagues' work is published in the journal Science.