Environmental Changes and the Origin of Agriculture in the near East
- 15 February 1970
- journal article
- Published by Oxford University Press (OUP) in BioScience
- Vol. 20 (4) , 210-217
- https://doi.org/10.2307/1295126
Abstract
The cultural sequence in the Taurus-Zagros mountain arc was marked about 11,000 years ago by a change from a hunting economy, in which the people lived primarily in caves, to a food-producing economy, with cultivation of cereal grains, domestication of animals, and occupation of open living sites. Pollen studies of lake sediments in the same region point to a change about 11,000 years ago from a cool steppe to a warm oak savanna and finally a woodland. Modern stands of wild barley, einkorn, and especially emmer are found today in the oak woodland. Perhaps they also immigrated 11,000 years ago along with the oak, and then were domesticated. The chronological coincidence of the climatic change and the agricultural revolution suggests that the former may have set the stage for the latter.Keywords
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