Journal
HOLOCENE
Volume 11, Issue 4, Pages 383-393Publisher
SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD
DOI: 10.1191/095968301678302823
Keywords
agricultural origins; cereal cultivation; hunter-gatherers; domestication; palaeoclimate; rye; Abu Hureyra; Euphrates; southwestern Asia; Lateglaical; early Holocene
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Hitherto, the earliest archaeological finds of domestic cereals in southwestern Asia have involved wheats and barleys dating from the beginning of the Holocene, 11-12000 calendar years ago. New evidence from the site of Abu Hureyra suggests that systematic cultivation of cereals in fact started well before the end of the Pleistocene-by at least 13000 years ago, and that rye was among the first crops. The evidence also indicates that hunter-gatherers at Abu Hureyra first started cultivating crops in response to a steep decline in wild plants that had served as staple foods for at least the preceding four centuries. The decline in these wild staples is attributable to a sudden, dry, cold, climatic reversal equivalent to the 'Younger Dryas' period. At Abu Hureyra, therefore, it appears that the primary trigger for the occupants to start cultivating caloric staples was climate change. It is these beginnings of cultivation in the late Pleistocene that gave rise to the integrated grain-livestock Neolithic farming systems of the early Holocene.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available