BBC News | Sci/Tech | First farmers discovered
Front Page
World
UK
UK Politics
7/14/14, 6:14 AM
Thursday, October 28, 1999 Published at 09:48 GMT
Sci/Tech
First farmers discovered
Business
Sci/Tech Contents
Relevant Stories
28 Oct 99 | Sci/Tech
Oldest bread in Britain
01 Oct 99 | Sci/Tech
Neanderthals were
cannibals
Sci/Tech
Health
03 Sep 99 | Sci/Tech
Inheriting the family nose
Education
06 May 99 | Sci/Tech
Sport
Ancient 'tool factory'
uncovered
Entertainment
Talking Point
Internet Links
Feedback
Low Graphics
Help
Fat cultivated seeds: skinny wild seeds
The first farmers grew wheat and rye 13,000 years ago
in Syria and were forced into cultivating crops by a
terrible drought, according to UK archaeologists.
Professor Gordon Hillman, at University College London,
has spent over 20 years investigating the remains of
ancient food plants at a unique site at Abu Hureyra, in
the middle Euphrates.
"Nowhere else has an unbroken sequence of
archaeological evidence stretching from hunter-gatherer
times to full-blown farming," he told BBC News Online.
Hunter-gatherers
The evidence for cultivated crops comes from seeds
carefully sifted from the material excavated at Abu
Hureyra. These had survived because they had been
accidentally charred in domestic fires before eventually
becoming buried.
Institute of Archaeology,
UCL
BBC Horizon
The BBC is not responsible for
the content of external internet
sites.
In this section
World's smallest
transistor
Scientists join forces to
study Arctic ozone
Mathematicians crack big
puzzle
From Business
The growing threat of
internet fraud
Who watches the pilots?
From Health
Many years of ecological
field work assessing present
day vegetation was also
necessary to provide a basis
for interpreting the material
found.
Cold 'cure' comes one
step closer
"What we expected to find
from the hunter-gatherer
levels at the site was lots of
wild cereals. These are
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/489449.stm
Page 1 of 3
BBC News | Sci/Tech | First farmers discovered
7/14/14, 6:14 AM
characteristically very skinny
and we found plenty of
them," explains Professor
Hillman.
"But then, at higher and later
levels, we found things that
did not belong there. There
were these whacking, great
fat seeds, characteristic of
cultivation."
Farming crisis: drought drove the
hunter-gatherers into cultivation
The cultivated seeds found at
Abu Hureyra are the oldest
yet found.
A dry death
Professor Hillman and his team found that, as they
looked through the archaeological record, the wild seed
varieties gathered as food gradually vanished, before the
cultivated varieties appeared. Those wild seeds most
dependent on water were the first to die out, followed
one by one by the more hardy ones.
This was a clue to why the hunter-gatherer people
turned to cultivating some of the foods they had
previously collected from the wild, and prompted
Professor Hillman to look at independent climate records
for the period.
What he found was evidence for a terrible drought: "It
was very sharp and would certainly have been felt within
a human lifetime, perhaps even in the space of 10 or so
years."
Geologist call this period the Younger Dryas, a 1000year spell of cold and dry weather with interrupted the
planet's gradual warming from the last ice age.
Professor Hillman's team
suggest that as the wild
grasses and seeds that the
people relied on for food died
out, they were forced to start
cultivating the most easilygrown of them in order to
survive.
The land had to be cleared
before planting
Professor David Harris, also
at UCL, said: "There came a
point when this community
had no option - they were
stuck with agriculture."
The archaeologists found no evidence that the irrigation
was used to grow the first crops as the drought set it.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/489449.stm
Page 2 of 3
BBC News | Sci/Tech | First farmers discovered
7/14/14, 6:14 AM
Professor Hillman explains: "What they did was to take
seed of the wild cereals from higher areas to the West,
and sowed it close to Abu Hureyra in areas such as
breaks in slope, where soil moisture was greatly
enhanced naturally."
"Wild stands of these cereals could not have continued
to grow unaided in such locations because they would
have been out-competed by dryland scrub. Therefore,
these first cultivators had to clear the competing
vegetation."
The team's work is featured as part of the Horizon
programme 'Atlantis Uncovered', Thursday 28 October at
2130 BST on BBC2.
Search
Advanced options | Search tips
Back to top | BBC News Home | BBC Homepage | ©
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/489449.stm
Page 3 of 3