Experimental harvesting of wild peas in Israel: implications for the origins of Near East farming

Origin of Near Eastern plant domestication: homage to Claude Levi-Strauss and “La Pensée Sauvage”

“…For example, sowing wild pea, lentil, or chickpea rarely yields any return (Ladizinsky 1987(Ladizinsky , 1989(Ladizinsky , 1993. Therefore, the domestication of pea, lentil, and chickpea simply cannot be explained in terms of automatic selection dynamics (Kerem et al 2007;Abbo et al 2008aAbbo et al , b, 2009. Although Ladizinsky's (1987) model was severely criticised (Zohary 1989, Blumler 1991 and never gained popularity, biological evidence of Near Eastern wild and domesticated legumes, renders the model not only relevant but also more valid than ever (see Abbo et al 2009 for a review on the profound differences between legumes and cereals domestication).…”

Presence of vetches (Vicia spp.) in agricultural and wild floras of ancient Europe

“…Although there are opinions that the domestication of grain legumes could predate cereals (Kislev and BarYosef 1988), they are generally considered by the mainstream scientific community not postulated to a sufficiently firm basis. At any rate, it may be said that there is an overall agreement that very little is known about the early stages of grain legumes domestication in comparison to that of the cereals (Abbo et al 2008), as well as that grain legume remains in most cases, from the Early Pre-Pottery Neolithic times in the Near East onwards, accompany the wild collected, semidomesticated or fully domesticated members of the tribe Triticeae (Abbo et al 2013).…”

Wild lentil and chickpea harvest in Israel: bearing on the origins of Near Eastern farming

“…Population structure and the potential yield of wild stands are highly relevant here since from the very early attempts that eventually resulted in domestication, plant-human interaction was largely dependent upon the biological features of the species involved (e.g., Abbo et al, 2005Abbo et al, , 2008Jackson, 1996;Ladizinsky, 1979Ladizinsky, , 1987Rindos, 1984;Zohary, 2004).…”

“…Studies of plant domestication included considerable work on archaeobotanical assemblages from archaeological sites in the region (see summaries in Garrard, 1999;Zohary and Hopf, 2000;Nesbitt, 2002; and references therein), some archeoethnobotanical observations (e.g., Hillman, 1984;Hillman and Davies, 1990;Simms and Russell, 1997), series of controlled experiments including sowing (see papers in Anderson, 1992Anderson, , 1999, harvesting and threshing of package plants, use wear analysis on stone tools from the relevant sites in search of evidence for the respective activities on the unearthed tools (e.g., Anderson, 1998;Yamada, 2000) and controlled collection exercises of wild relevant plants, mainly cereals but recently legumes too (Abbo et al, 2008). Cereals were at the focus of much of this research, including controlled field collection of the wild taxa, for understandable reasons, mainly their major role in world economy to this very day.…”