Early Domesticated Fig in the Jordan Valley

Kislev, Mordechai E.; Hartmann, Anat; Bar‐Yosef, Ofer

doi:10.1126/science.1125910

Cited by 322 publications

(186 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…At Dhra', we uncovered a stone bin next to a structure and several clay-lined features that may have been used for small-scale storage. Evidence for PPNA storage complements studies that document the cultivation of plants in the Jordan Valley (6,10). These studies have focused on the morphological changes in subsistence plants from individual settlements through time.…”

Section: Bp (Isgs-a0246mentioning

confidence: 85%

Evidence for food storage and predomestication granaries 11,000 years ago in the Jordan Valley

Kuijt

Finlayson²

2009

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

208

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Food storage is a vital component in the economic and social package that comprises the Neolithic, contributing to plant domestication, increasingly sedentary lifestyles, and new social organizations. Recent excavations at Dhra' near the Dead Sea in Jordan provide strong evidence for sophisticated, purpose-built granaries in a predomestication context Ϸ11,300 -11,175 cal B.P., which support recent arguments for the deliberate cultivation of wild cereals at this time. Designed with suspended floors for air circulation and protection from rodents, they are located between residential structures that contain plant-processing instillations. The granaries represent a critical evolutionary shift in the relationship between people and plant foods, which precedes the emergence of domestication and large-scale sedentary communities by at least 1,000 years.Near East ͉ Neolithic ͉ forager-farmer transition N ew archaeological work at the PPNA (Pre-Pottery Neolithic A; Ϸ11,500-10,500 cal B.P.) site of Dhra', located next to the Dead Sea in Jordan, reveals clear evidence for large-scale storage in sophisticated, purpose-built granaries before the domestication of plants. Evidence for PPNA food storage illustrates a major transition in the economic and social organization of human communities. The transition from economic systems based on collecting and foraging of wild food resources before this point to cultivation and foraging of mixed wild and managed resources in the PPNA illustrates a major intensification of human-plant relationships.People in the PPNA were the first in the world to develop systematic large-scale food storage. In the Early Natufian period (Ϸ15,000/14,500-12,800 cal B.P.), people used a remarkably wide range of wild plants and animals, lived in relatively large well-made semisubterranean buildings for much of the year, and undoubtedly had a detailed knowledge of the seasonality and availability of these resources (1). Certainly the apparent increased degree of sedentism in the Early Natufian period suggests that people were able to reduce seasonal food risks to the point where they could live in the same areas for 1 or more seasons of the year. There is, however, surprisingly little direct evidence for food storage (2, 3). The strongest is from 'Ain Mallaha (4), where pits are often termed silos although their specific function is unclear. There is indirect evidence in the Natufian for plant food processing, including the presence of sickles, mortars, and pestles. Although Natufian people probably engaged in some form of low-level food storage, they also situated their settlements where they were able to use high-yield food resources from multiple natural ecotones in different seasons. With the onset of the climatic downturn of the Younger Dryas, people in the Late Natufian period (Ϸ12,800-11,500 cal B.P.) returned to more mobile economic and subsistence strategies. Late Natufian people abandoned earlier settlements, adopted new systems seasonal residential movement, and rarely built residential structu...

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Section: Bp (Isgs-a0246mentioning

confidence: 85%

Evidence for food storage and predomestication granaries 11,000 years ago in the Jordan Valley

Kuijt

Finlayson²

2009

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

208

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“…Evidence from multiple locations point to a prolonged period of human manipulation of morphologically wild, but possibly cultivated, plants which, in certain species, resulted in the development of morphologically altered domesticated crops (26)(27)(28). This period of intensified plant management dates at least as far back as ca.…”

Section: Initial Animal Domestication In the Fertile Crescentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Domestication and early agriculture in the Mediterranean Basin: Origins, diffusion, and impact

Zeder

2008

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

895

612

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The past decade has witnessed a quantum leap in our understanding of the origins, diffusion, and impact of early agriculture in the Mediterranean Basin. In large measure these advances are attributable to new methods for documenting domestication in plants and animals. The initial steps toward plant and animal domestication in the Eastern Mediterranean can now be pushed back to the 12th millennium cal B.P. Evidence for herd management and crop cultivation appears at least 1,000 years earlier than the morphological changes traditionally used to document domestication. Different species seem to have been domesticated in different parts of the Fertile Crescent, with genetic analyses detecting multiple domestic lineages for each species. Recent evidence suggests that the expansion of domesticates and agricultural economies across the Mediterranean was accomplished by several waves of seafaring colonists who established coastal farming enclaves around the Mediterranean Basin. This process also involved the adoption of domesticates and domestic technologies by indigenous populations and the local domestication of some endemic species. Human environmental impacts are seen in the complete replacement of endemic island faunas by imported mainland fauna and in today's anthropogenic, but threatened, Mediterranean landscapes where sustainable agricultural practices have helped maintain high biodiversity since the Neolithic.archaeology ͉ livestock

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“…As a result, they would have been reproductive dead-ends unless humans intervened by deliberately propagating their shoots. [61][62][63] As was the case with agave, such replanting of fig branches could also have taken place close to human habitation sites, expanding the niche of the encouraged species while making each year's fig crop easier to monitor and harvest. In addition, since such planted shoots could not be expected to yield fruit for some years, humans had clearly accepted the delayed reward associated with a slow-maturing crop.…”

Section: Domesticates Provide Evidence Of Niche Constructionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Niche construction and the behavioral context of plant and animal domestication

Smith¹

2007

Evolutionary Anthropology

220

147

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Many animal species attempt to enhance their environments through niche construction or environmental engineering. Such efforts at environmental modification are proposed to play an important and underappreciated role in shaping biotic communities and evolutionary processes.1, 2 Homo sapiens is acknowledged as the ultimate niche constructing species in terms of our rich repertoire of ecosystem engineering skills and the magnitude of their impact. We have been trying to make the world a better place—for ourselves—for tens of thousands of years. I argue here that it is within this general context of niche‐construction behavior that our distant ancestors initially domesticated plants and animals and, in the process, first gained the ability to significantly alter the world's environments.The general concept of niche construction also provides the logical link between current efforts to understand domestication being conducted at two disconnected scales of analysis. At the level of individual plant and animal species, on one hand, there recently have been significant advances in our knowledge of the what, when, and where of domestication of an ever‐increasing number of species worldwide.3 At the same time, large‐scale regional or universal developmental models of the transition to food production continue to be formulated. These incorporate a variety of “macro‐evolutionary” causal variables that may account for why human societies first domesticated plants and animals.4, 5 This essay employs the general concept of niche construction to address the intervening question of how, and to connect these two scales of analysis by identifying the general behavioral context within which human societies responded to “macroevolutionary” causal variables and forged new human plant or animal relationships of domestication.

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Early Domesticated Fig in the Jordan Valley

Cited by 322 publications

References 8 publications

Evidence for food storage and predomestication granaries 11,000 years ago in the Jordan Valley

Evidence for food storage and predomestication granaries 11,000 years ago in the Jordan Valley

Domestication and early agriculture in the Mediterranean Basin: Origins, diffusion, and impact

Niche construction and the behavioral context of plant and animal domestication

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