@Vouthon
The information regarding the chronology of farming and crop domestication is based on the paper below
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/659307
1) The basic idea is that beginning of settlement and farming practices began several centuries earlier than when evidence of genetic modification of crops show up in archaelogy.
There is, in fact, increasing evidence that humans were actively modifying local ecosystems and manipulating biotic communities to increase the availability of certain economically important plant resources for hundreds of years before the manifestation of morphological indicators of plant domestication (Weiss, Kislev, and Hartmann
2006; Willcox, Buxó, and Herveux
2009; Willcox, Fornite, and Herveux
2008).
First, the presence of
distinctive complexes of weedy species characteristic of fields under human cultivation suggests that
humans were actively tilling and tending wild stands of einkorn and rye at both Abu Hureyra and nearby Mureybit during the Late Epipaleolithic (ca. 13,000–12,000 cal BP; Colledge
1998,
2002; Hillman
2000:378). Increases in this weed complex at
Qaramel (ca. 11,500 cal BP) and Jerf el Ahmar (ca. 11,000 cal BP) signals an intensification of plant cultivation in the Middle Euphrates during the ensuing PPNA period (Willcox, Fornite, and Herveux
2008).
Willcox, Fornite, and Herveux (
2008; also Willcox, Buxó, and Herveux
2009) also interpret the increase in the quantity of wild einkorn in Early Holocene assemblages from the Middle Euphrates sites as additional evidence of human management of this plant. Wild einkorn
T. monococcum ssp.
baeoticum is not well adapted to the chalky soils of the Middle Euphrates, and it would not have responded well to the rising temperatures of the Early Holocene. Today the region is too hot and arid for wild einkorn, which can be found only on basalt lava flows 100 km north of Jerf el Ahmar.
The dramatic increase in the representation of wild einkorn in Middle Euphrates assemblages over the course of the PPNA to Early PPNB could happen, these authors argue, only if people were actively tending plants transplanted from preferred habitats, altering local microhabitats, removing competition, and artificially diverting water to tended plants (Willcox, Fornite, and Herveux
2008:321)
In addition to the quantities of lentils recovered from PPNA sites such as Netiv Hagdud and Gigal, the large number of morphologically wild barley and wild oats (
Avena sterilis) recovered from these sites (e.g., 260,000 grains of wild barley and 120,000 of wild oats from a single granary at Gigal) suggests that people in the southern Levant were also cultivating plants of economic interest.
2)Despite this evidence of deliberate farming, the crops begin to Genetically alter only later, and then too quite slowly.
Nesbitt’s comprehensive evaluation of the evidence for the appearance of domesticated cereals in the Near East concludes that
the evidence for morphologically altered cereal domesticates before about 10,500 cal BP is either too poorly documented or too poorly dated to be accepted as marking the initial threshold of cereal domestication (Nesbitt
2002). The earliest securely identified and dated domestic emmer (
Triticum turgidum ssp.
dicoccum) and einkorn (
T. monococcumssp.
monococcum) grains and chaff, according to Nesbitt, come from sites in the Upper Euphrates valley (Nevali Çori, Cafer Höyük, and possibly Çayönü)
that date to the Early PPNB, at about 10,500–10,200 cal BP. Nesbitt contends that securely identified and dated domestic barley is not seen until the Middle PPNB, when it is found throughout the Fertile Crescent and Anatolian Plateau.
Domestic morphotypes constitute only 10% of the single-grained einkorn recovered from Nevali Çori (ca. 10,200 cal BP), barely meeting the threshold for demonstrating the presence of domestic cereals. Only 35% of the barley recovered from somewhat later levels at Aswad (10,200–9500 cal BP) and a little over 50% of the barley recovered from Ramad (9500–8500 cal BP) are nonshattering varieties. Even as late as 7500 cal BP, domestic morphotypes constitute only around 60% of the two-grained einkorn recovered from Kosak Shamali, a variety that Willcox postulates represents a second domestication of diploid wheats.
3) This time lag between the beginning of farming and emergence of domesticated varieties is thought to cone from the fact that in the early centuries there will still wild grasses around and framers were still collecting and planting farms with wild varieties from the countryside instead of solely relying on preserved seeds of earlier seasons crops.
The delayed expression of domestication-induced morphological changes in managed plants (at 10,500–10,000 cal BP in cereals and later still in pulses)
may be attributable to the frequent importation of new wild plants when cultivated crops failed (Tanno and Willcox 2006a). It is also possible that early harvesting practices may not have encouraged the morphological changes to cereal dispersal mechanisms once thought to be a first-line marker of cereal domestication. Beating ripened grain heads into baskets, for example, or harvesting cereals before they were fully ripe or even gleaning shattered heads of grain from the ground might have led to the retention of the brittle rachis in cultivated cereals (Hartmann, Kislev, and Weiss
2006; Lev-Yadun, Gopher, and Abbo
2006; Tanno and Willcox
2006a; Willcox and Tanno
2006).
The appearance of morphological change in these founder crops is, then, most likely an artifact of a change in management or harvesting practices of cultivated crops and not a leading-edge indicator of plants being brought under human control.
4) So what is the upshot? Recent research concludes that farming and animal husbandry was already well established and in the Near East at least by 11,500 BP (or 9500 BC). Thus farming and animal management practices were already being practiced when Gobleki Tepe was being built.
Given this, I would tentatively conclude that Gobleki Tepe was the first manifestation of surplus induced increased social elaboration and complexity of material and religious culture in the Near East. It was the consequence and not the cause of the Neolithic revolution.
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 the landmark Bar-Yosef and Meadow (
1995) article. In 1995, there appeared to have been at least a 1,500-year gap between initial crop domestication (ca. 11,400 cal BP) and livestock domestication (ca. 10,000 cal BP)
. It now seems that plant and animal domestication occurred at roughly the same time, with signs of initial management of morphologically wild future plant and animal domesticates reaching back to at least 11,500 cal BP, if not earlier.
At the time this influential article was published, it appeared that the southern Levant was the core area for initial domestication, and a case could be made that all subsequent crop and livestock domestication in other parts of the Fertile Crescent followed on the precedent of the crops, domestic technology, and the Neolithic way of life introduced from this core region. Since then, the spotlight has shifted to the central Fertile Crescent, especially the upper reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which appears to be the homeland of the initial domestication of a number of founder crops (einkorn, emmer, pulses) and three, if not four, livestock species (sheep, pigs, cattle, and possibly goats). By the late 1990s, a compelling case could be made that this region was a “cradle of agriculture” in a true Vavlovian sense (Lev-Yadun, Gopher, and Abbo
2000). Genetic and archaeobiological evidence generated since then paints a much less focused, more diffuse picture of agricultural origins.
The emergence of agriculture in the Near East now seems to have been a pluralistic process with initial domestication of various crops and livestock occurring, sometimes multiple times in the same species, across the entire region.
We now know that morphological change may have occurred quite late in the domestication process and can no longer be considered a leading-edge indicator of domestication. In
cereals, the transition from brittle to tough rachises may actually have been the result of changes in harvest timing and technology that took place well after people began sowing harvested seed stock. In pulses, seed-size change lagged behind changes in seed dormancy and plant yield that cannot be detected in the archaeological record. In animals, the impact of human management on body size is now known to have been restricted to a decrease in the degree of sexual dimorphism; alterations in skull morphology may have resulted from a developing commensal relationship rather than a two-way domestic partnership; and changes in horn size and form may, like changes in rachis morphology, have reflected a change in management practice rather than the initiation of animal management.
In fact, in both plants and animals, archaeologically detectable morphological indicators of domestication may have occurred only once managed plants and animals were isolated from free-living populations and the opportunity for introgression or restocking managed populations with wild ones was eliminated. While some may prefer not to call a plant or an animal a domesticate until this separation has occurred, concentrating solely on this late stage of the process will not help us understand how it began.
