Added November
10, 2001. Updated July 19, 2008, 20:46 hours.
This page will be updated occasionally to
add and revise information.
The Origins of Agriculture
Version 2.02
By
Maximilian O. Baldia
(Copy Right © 2000 - July 19,
2008. All rights reserved)
Introduction
The purpose of this text is to provide a general overview of the culture and is intended as a resource for students and teachers of European Archaeology.
The First
Domesticated Plants and Animals
The transition from hunting and gathering to full-fledged farming is important throughout many parts of the world, but the period of initial domestication and the gradual shift to a full farming economy are ill defined (Smith 2001).
Farming, that is the intensive use of domesticated plants and animals, developed independently from an earlier stage of experimentation in many parts of the world. For example, the first species to be domesticated was the dog. It was apparently derived from the wolf by hunter-gatherers in various regions around the world. Although thought to be first used as an aid in hunting, dogs eventually fulfilled several different functions, including pulling travois and serving as a source for wool and food for Native Americans and other people, who were not necessarily agriculturists.
Similarly, the domestication of plants also occurred in several different places. Maize (often referred to as corn in American English), potatoes, beans, squashes, were domesticated in the New World. The llama, alpaca, guinea pig, and turkey also number as domesticates in this part of the world.
In the Old World, people of the Far East domesticated rice and soybeans, after millet. However, the earliest domestication of plants and animals appears to occur in the Near East.
The Earliest Domesticates in the Near East
In the late 1940’s, Braidwood started research on the early domestication of sheep, goat, wheat and barley in Iraq. In time, it became obvious that the Fertile Crescent had all the necessary ingredients for the gradual development of domestication. Bar-Yosef came to conclude that cereal harvesting reached back 12 000 – 10 000 years ago[1] (Near East Neolithic Chronology Table. Recent genetic plant research shows that emmer and einkorn wheat, barley, chickpea, pea and lentils occurred together in a core area around the upper Tigris and Euphrates River, near the earliest sites that contain evidence of their domestication.[2]
The distribution of wild animals overlaps with the core area of plant domestication. Wild sheep and goat are confined to Western Asia (the Near East), the distribution of cattle and pigs ranges from the Atlantic in Europe to the Pacific in the Far East (Map). While it seems that cattle and pigs were domesticated after the sheep and goat, their place of domestication is more difficult to ascertain, although Anatolia, Turkey, Greece and Thessaly are the most likely.
Theoretically, the wide distribution of the now extinct wild progenitor of cattle, called urus or aurochs (German for primeval ox), and Bos taurus primigenius (Latin), could have permitted domestication in various places at different times. In fact, interbreeding between wild and domesticated cattle throughout prehistory is a possibility, even though one genetic study seems to show that modern European cattle come from Near Eastern stock. Raising additional questions is the fact that there appear be two different kinds of domesticated cattle in prehistoric European. One thing is certain, the huge, wild auerochs was a formidable beast that would not have submitted easily to domestication.
Causes for Transition
from Hunter-Gatherer to Agriculturist
Archaeologist have long asked why there was a shift from hunting and gathering in many parts of the world after the last glacial period. The answers are debated, but for the Near East, climate is an important factor.
Following the last glacial maximum, changes in the expansion and contraction of the vegetation belts are demonstrated by pollen sequences. The changes are driven by decadal and centennial quantities of precipitation, rather than just temperature.[3] The pluvial (wet) conditions peaked around 11500 cal BC, resulting in a combination of a large number of periodically reliable stands of grasses with large grains. This encouraged an increase in population and greater sedentism, social complexity and territoriality. However, this limited the economic options during periods of climatic stress imposed by the Younger Dryas (ca. 11000 – 9700 cal BC). It is postulated that this cold dry spell precipitated the “intentional cultivation of natural stands of cereals.”[4]
Estimates imply that the resulting Neolithic agricultural practices produced greater yields than those of unattended wild cereals.[5] The scientific estimates of yields come from the ancient naked wheat (Triticum durum/aestivum) found at Tell Halula. This is the earliest known village in the vicinity of the Middle Euphrates in Syria, from which domesticated naked wheat is reported. The site dates from Middle Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB, ca. 7600 cal BC) to the Late Neolithic (Pre-Halaf, ca. 6700 cal BC).
The Spread of the
Near Eastern Farming Economy
Todorova 1998 argues that continued climate changes drove the expansion of the farming based economy from Palestine via Anatolia the Balkan Peninsula. Based on the comparison of archaeological data and inferences about climate change from ice core data, she notes that increased heat and aridity caused a settlement collapse in Palestine between 7000 – 6600 cal. BC and the desiccation of the Sahara. The Neolithic Little Ice Age of 6300 – 6000 cal BC coupled with a sea level, 20 m below the current level, and the concomitant short oversea travel distances between the landmasses around in the Aegean Sea encouraged a population movement from Anatolia into the Balkans. The rapid rise in Sea level by 6000 cal BC may have decreased the interaction with Anatolia.
The idea that agriculture was introduced into Europe through population movements is a traditional notion.[6] Indeed, the spread of agriculture into Europe has been equated with a Diaspora (Bogucki 1997). However, much of the archaeology in the Balkans is debated (e.g. Tringham 2000). More detailed data from fine, well documented archaeological strata with careful association of precision dated finds is necessary. These need to be compared with similar quality data from Anatolia and particularly the Fertile Crescent. Even in parts of Central Europe the transition from hunting and gathering bands of the Mesolithic to the Neolithic agricultural economy of the Starčevo-Körös-Criş [Starcevo-Koros-Cris] and Bandkeramik (LBK and AVK) is under renewed scrutiny.
The Two Routs to
Central European Agriculture
It is currently accepted that agriculture reached Central and Western Europe by two routes. One agricultural movement from the Near East followed the Mediterranean and is thought to be traceable by a Cardial-Impressed pottery. Reaching the Mediterranean Coast of Italy and France a northward progress from these pottery using groups unfolded around 6000-5600 cal BC.[7] Starting around 5500 cal BC, bone-tempered pottery known as La Hoguette, named after a site in western France, appears along with Mesolithic-like stone tools and sheep-goat bones in the Rhône valley, Northern France, Switzerland and Southwest Germany (e.g. Jochim 2000:192-193). Although the pottery is linked to the Mediterranean Neolithic, the stone tools reveal a continued Mesolithic tradition.
The other general route seems to have led from the Near East, probably across Greece to Hungary. There agriculture reached the expanses of the lower Tisza drainage near the Danube between 6400 – 6100 cal BC, as indicated by dates for C14 dates of monochrome Köros-type pottery. The development of Starčevo-Körös-Criş [Starcevo-Koros-Cris] culture in parts of the Carpathian Basin is followed by Bandkeramik pottery in Hungary, Austria and adjacent regions of the Danube Basin, after about 5700/5600 cal BC, implying either a moratorium on expansion, or a very gradual, but continued spread along the Upper Danube River and its tributaries.
The evidence thus implies that there was a roughly simultaneous switch to domesticates in Central and Western Europe around 5500 cal BC. This period seems to be a critical phase for the spread of farming into the central latitudes of Europe, leading to a meeting of eastern and western agriculturist. Indeed, La Hoguette seems to coexist with the Bandkeramik in several sites, but there are exceptions. For instance, the La Hoguette assemblage in Stuttgart-Wilhelma is described as being “relatively pure” (e.g. Jochim 2000, Price 2000a). This is surprising, because the site is located on the Upper Neckar River in Germany, near the source of the Danube River, far from the French type site of La Hoguette.
In summary, it appears that the Bandkeramik developed roughly 2000 years after the use of the earliest domesticated plants and animals in the Near East. Therefore, neither the people, their language, nor their technology or religion can simply be assumed to be identical with the people who domesticated the first plants in the Fertile Crescent.
References and
Credits
Ammerman A. J.
and L. L. Cavalli-Sforza
1971 Measuring the rate of spread of early
farming in Europe. Man, 6:674-688.
1973 A population model for the diffusion of
early farming in Europe. C. Renfrew
(Ed.) The explanation of Culture Change. Duckworth
Press, London, 1973:343-357.
Araus, José Luisa; Slafer,
Gustavo Arielb; Romagosa, Ignacioc; Molist, Miqueld
2001 FOCUS: Estimated Wheat Yields During the Emergence of
Agriculture Based on the Carbon Isotope Discrimination of Grains:Evidence from
a 10th Millennium BP Site on the EuphratesJournal of Archaeological Science
28/4, April 2001:341-350
Bar-Yosef, O. and A. Belfer-Cohen
1992 From Foraging to Farming. In Gebauer, Anne Birgitte and T.
Douglas Price (Eds.) Transitions to Agriculture in Prehistory.
Monographs in World Archaeology 4, 1992:21-48.
Bar-Yosef, Ofer, Richard H.
Meadow
1995 The Origins of Agriculture in the Near East. In Douglas, Price
T. and Anne Birgitte Gebauer (Ed.) Last Hunters – First Farmers: New Perspectives
on the Prehistoric Transition to Agriculture. School of American Research
Press, Santa Fe, N.M. 1995:39-94.
1988 Forest Farmers and Stock Breeders: Early
Agriculture and its Consequences in North-Central Europe. Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge.
1997 The Neolithic Diaspora
in Europe
Jochim, Michael
2000 The origins of agriculture in
south-central Europe. In Price, T. Douglas (Ed.), Europe's First Farmers.
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK and New York, 2000:183-196.
Lev-Yadun, S., A.
Gopher, and A. Abbo
2000 The Cradle of Agriculture. Science July
2, 2000, 288/5471:1602-1603.
1986 Die Bandkeramik im
Graetheidegebiet, Niederländisch-Limburg. Berichte
der Römisch- Germanischen Kommission, 66:1985:25-121.
Price, T. Douglas (Ed.)
2000 Europe's First Farmers.
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK; New
York.
Smith, Bruce D.
2001 Low-Level Food Production. Journal of
Archaeological Research 9/1, March 2001:1-43
Todorova, Henrieta
1998 Probleme der Umwelt der
prähistorischen Kulturen zwischen 7000 und 100 v.Chr. In Hänsel, Bernhard and Jan Machnik (Eds.),
Das Karpatenbecken und die osteuropäische Steppe. Nomadenbewegungen
und Kulturaustausch in den vorchristlichen Metallzeiten (4000-500 v.Chr.). Prähistorische
Archäologie in Südosteuropa 12 - Südosteuropa-Schriften 20. Verlag Marie Leidorf. Rahden/Westf.,
Germany, 1998:65-70.
Tringham, Ruth
1971 Hunters, Fishers and
Farmers of Eastern Europe: 6000-3000 B.C., Hutchinson, London.
2001 Southeastern Europe in the transition to agriculture in Europe:
bridge, buffer, or mosaic. In T. D. Price 2000:19-56.
Troy, C. S, D. E.
MacHugh, J. F. Bailey, et al.
2001 Genetic evidence of Near Eastern Origins
of European Cattle. Nature 4/10 2001:1088-1091.
Please send comments or questions to Max Baldia.