The Origins of Agriculture in the Near East
@article{Zeder2011TheOO, title={The Origins of Agriculture in the Near East}, author={Melinda A. Zeder}, journal={Current Anthropology}, year={2011}, volume={52}, pages={S221 - S235} }
The emerging picture of plant and animal domestication and agricultural origins in the Near East is dramatically different from that drawn 16 years ago in a landmark article by Bar-Yosef and Meadow. While in 1995 there appeared to have been at least a 1,500-year gap between plant and animal domestication, it now seems that both occurred at roughly the same time, with initial management of morphologically wild future plant and animal domesticates reaching back to at least 11,500 cal BP, if not…
447 Citations
Pre-agricultural plant management in the uplands of the central Zagros: the archaeobotanical evidence from Sheikh-e Abad
- Environmental ScienceVegetation History and Archaeobotany
- 2018
Prior to the emergence of agriculture in southwest Asia, increasingly sedentary human communities were experimenting with a diverse range of wild plants over a prolonged period. In some cases, this…
Multi-stage dispersal of Southwest Asian domestic livestock and the path of pastoralism in the Middle Nile Valley
- Economics
- 2016
Localized management of non-indigenous animal domesticates in Northwestern China during the Bronze Age
- Environmental ScienceScientific reports
- 2021
Stable isotope values of humans, animals, and a small number of plants from the Hexi Corridor show that the role of animal products in human diets was more significant than previously thought and suggest that cattle consumed diets that were more influenced by human provisioning, and may therefore have been reared closer to the human settlements, than sheep and goats.
Regional diversity on the timing for the initial appearance of cereal cultivation and domestication in southwest Asia
- Geography, MedicineProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- 2016
It is proposed that the cultivation of wild and domesticated cereals developed at different times across southwest Asia and was conditioned by the regionally diverse plant-based subsistence strategies adopted by Pre-Pottery Neolithic groups.
The Origins of Plant Cultivation and Domestication in the New World Tropics
- BiologyCurrent Anthropology
- 2011
This paper reviews this body of evidence and assesses current views about how and why domestication and plant food production arose and it is becoming clear that the more interesting question may be the origins of plant cultivation rather than the origin of agriculture.
Finding Plant Domestication in the Indian Subcontinent
- BiologyCurrent Anthropology
- 2011
An alternative hypothesis for several regions of India can be considered in which agriculture arose as a result of secondary domestications of local species after an initial introduction of farming from outside.
Meat at the origins of agriculture : faunal use and resource pressure at the origins of agriculture in the Northern U.S. Southwest
- Environmental Science
- 2012
The northern U.S. Southwest was once home to the Ancestral Puebloans (also called the Anasazi), famous for their impressive architecture, beautiful ceramics, and ability to succeed as corn farmers in…
The Roots of Cultivation in Southwestern Asia
- HistoryScience
- 2013
Evidence of early cultivation of crops in the Zagros Mountains of Iran helps to elucidate where and when humans first started to cultivate wild cereals, providing evidence that wild cereal cultivation in the eastern cluster occurred almost as early as in the clusters farther west.
New insights into livestock management and domestication at Tel Ro'im West, a multi-layer Neolithic site in the Upper Jordan Valley, Israel
- GeographyJournal of Archaeological Science: Reports
- 2019
References
SHOWING 1-10 OF 111 REFERENCES
Climatic Fluctuations and Early Farming in West and East Asia
- Environmental ScienceCurrent Anthropology
- 2011
This paper presents a Levantine model for the origins of cultivation of various wild plants as motivated by the vagaries of the climatic fluctuation of the Younger Dryas within the context of the…
The broad spectrum revisited: evidence from plant remains.
- Biology, MedicineProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
- 2004
A collection of >90,000 plant remains, recently recovered from the Stone Age site Ohalo II (23,000 B.P.), Israel, offers insights into the plant foods of the late Upper Paleolithic, indicating that the BSR in the Levant was even broader than originally conceived.
Early Holocene cultivation before domestication in northern Syria
- Biology
- 2008
Charred plant remains from the sites of Tell Qaramel, Jerf el Ahmar, Dja’de and Tell ‘Abr situated in northern Syria and dated to the tenth and ninth millennia cal b.c. demonstrate that a wide…
Documenting Domestication: New Genetic and Archaeological Paradigms
- Biology
- 2006
This groundbreaking volume for the first time brings together leading archaeologists and biologists working on the domestication of both plants and animals to consider a wide variety of archaeological and genetic approaches to tracing the origin and dispersal of domesticates.
Last hunters - first farmers : new perspectives on the prehistoric transition to agriculture
- Economics
- 1999
During virtually the entire four-million-year history of our habitation on this planet, humans have been hunters and gatherers, dependent for nourishment on the availability of wild plants and…
Late Pleistocene and early Holocene climate and the beginnings of cultivation in northern Syria
- Geography, Environmental Science
- 2009
Climate change has been interpreted as a contributing factor to the emergence of agriculture in the Near East. We examine how climate change may have affected the availability of food plants and…
The Early Process of Mammal Domestication in the Near East
- Environmental ScienceCurrent Anthropology
- 2011
Recent archaeological investigations on Cyprus have unveiled unsuspected Late Glacial and Early Holocene (twelfth–tenth millennia cal BP) pieces of the island’s human history. Based on a review of…
Ancient DNA, pig domestication, and the spread of the Neolithic into Europe
- BiologyProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- 2007
It is demonstrated that domestic pigs of Near Eastern ancestry were definitely introduced into Europe during the Neolithic (potentially along two separate routes), reaching the Paris Basin by at least the early 4th millennium B.C.
Genetic evidence for Near-Eastern origins of European cattle
- Environmental ScienceNature
- 2001
The limited ranges of the wild progenitors of many of the primary European domestic species point to their origins further east in Anatolia or the fertile crescent. The wild ox (Bos primigenius),…
The role of wild grasses in subsistence and sedentism: new evidence from the northern Fertile Crescent
- Geography
- 2006
Abstract Sedentism is usually regarded as a pre-condition for the development of crop husbandry in Southwest Asia and, consequently, sedentary pre-agrarian sites are an important focus of research on…