Experiments by Hillman and Davies (1990) indicate that domestication of grain and consequent changes in the plants may be achieved within 20 to 30 years by specific harvesting techniques but can take 200 years or more. In animals, with lengthier generations, morphological changes are even slower to appear. By the time we see the ‘‘first’’ domestic plant or animal, the decision that brought it about was already generations distant. But this has not prevented many scholars from searching for those elusive ‘‘firsts.’’
Most recent literature reconstructs the center ofagriculture in the southern Levant, with subsequent spread to the rest of the Near East and Europe (McCorriston and Hole 1991; Wright 1993; Bar-Yosef and Meadow 1995; Bar-Yosef 2002). But this Levant-centric presentation is clouded by modern political tensions. A smaller amount of archaeological research has been done in the comparable environmental zone of the Zagros foothills along the Iran-Iraq border, and the extant work is mostly pre-1979, creating a knowledge gap there and a bias toward the Levant as the supposed center for agricultural origins. Research in Syria and southeast Turkey has only begun to alter the picture (Willcox 1999).
Many sites have provided archaeological evidence for early ‘‘founder crops’’ with the larger size, restricted dissemination mechanism, and morphological changes that mark them as domesticated. For the Near East the founder crops were emmer and einkorn wheat, barley, lentils, peas, chickpeas, and bitter vetch. Domesticated emmer wheat and barley from southern Levant sites such as Jericho (7500 bce)1 and Netiv Hagdud (8260-7800 bce) were increasingly joined by early domestic grains from sites in other regions: Tell Abu Hureyra on the Euphrates in Syria (einkorn, emmer, and barley 7700 bce, domestic rye possibly as early as 10,000 bce), Tell Aswad near Damascus (emmer and barley from 7800-7600 bce), and in southeast Turkey, Cafer Hoyiik (einkorn, emmer, and barley 7500 bce), (Jayonu (einkorn, emmer, and barley 7300-7200 bce), and Nevali (Jori (einkorn 7200 bce).
Archaeologically derived evidence for domestic plants is now supplemented with genetic research. Distribution maps of wild progenitors of domestic species have been updated with this genetic profiling. These studies are complicated by modern agricultural practices and the possibility of relatively recent genetic change within the wild populations (Harlan and Zohary 1966; Heun et al. 1997), but homogeneities found have led to the conclusion that there was a core zone within which grain and legume domestication took place. Accumulation of evidence for einkorn and emmer wheats points toward a southeastern Turkey or northern Syria origin for domestication (Nesbitt and Samuel 1998; Willcox 1999; Lev-Yadun, Gopher, and Abbo 2000; OOzkan et al. 2002).
Domestication of animals has also been studied through the bones themselves and through profiles of age and sex at death. Domestic animals are smaller, lighter, and lose defensive mechanisms seen in wild forms. But there are problems with size assessments, as these may relate to climate or topography variations and are complicated by differences between the sexes. Age and gender profiles are more reliable; managed and domesticated animals usually show selective culling of young males and late killing of adult females.
The dog was certainly the first domesticated animal, in the Epipaleolithic in the Levant, about 14,000 years before the present and perhaps much earlier. The dog was unique in that it was domesticated for protection and hunting, a companion and servant rather than a source of meat, milk, hair, or traction, as were the pig, goat, sheep, and cattle that followed. The Zagros foothills have been posited as the core animal domestication zone (Hole 1984). The earliest known domesticated goat bone has been identified from Ganj Dareh, initially on the basis of small size, reconfirmed by gender and age kill patterns (Zeder and Hesse 2000); this is currently radiocarbon dated to about 7960-7660 bce. Or pigs in southeast Turkey may have been the second animal domestication (Rosenberg 1999).
Food is arguably basic to human concepts of the self and is involved in everything from taboos to feasting, so the species shift, as well as the very fact of domestication, means a major change in self-perception and self-expression. Another issue is that complementary farming-herding practices became common over a wide area during a relatively short time span. Why did this happen?
World History
