The crops and livestock that fed the Neolithic communities of Europe (see Europe, Northern and Western: Early Neolithic Cultures) originated in the Near East. Recent research points towards a region known as the Levantine Corridor, an inland zone about 40 km long between the Damascus Basin and the lower Jordan Valley, as potentially the location of the earliest cultivation in the Near East. Einkorn wheat, emmer wheat, and barley are the three principal ‘founder crops’ of Near Eastern agriculture. They differ from their wild counterparts primarily by the nature of the rachis, the stem which holds the grain to the ear. Wild wheats and barley have a brittle rachis, which shatters at ripening to disperse the grain and thus propagate the plant. In domestic forms, the ra-chis is tougher and thicker, which permits the harvesting of the whole ear by cutting with sickles. Such a method would have selected for plants with tougher rachises which were dependent on humans for their propagation. At sites like Netiv Hagdud in the lower Jordan valley, early farmers lived in circular and oval structures built of mud bricks upon stone foundations and stored grain in underground storage pits.
Just as wheat and barley were the ‘founder crops’ of Near Eastern agriculture, sheep and goat can be considered the ‘founder animals’ of ungulate domestication, around 10 000 years ago. Goats appear to have been domesticated first in the Zagros Mountains, while sheep in the upper Tigris and Euphrates valleys underwent domestication a few centuries later. Cattle and pigs appear to have been domesticated in Anatolia around 9000 years ago. Recent DNA analyses show that the domestic cattle used in Neolithic Europe originated from this Anatolian source, with minimal ingression of native wild cattle genetic material. The earliest domestic pig in Europe also originated in Anatolia.
The major elements of the suite of Near Eastern domestic plants and animals spread from the core area of early agriculture in the Levant to Europe. Their dispersal to Europe is particularly interesting because plants and animals which had originated in semi-arid regions quickly adapted to temperate conditions. The mechanisms of this dispersal varied. In some areas, agricultural peoples themselves dispersed, bringing a sedentary lifestyle, crops, and livestock. Elsewhere, indigenous populations which had previously lived by foraging gradually adopted agriculture. The spread of farming in prehistoric Europe between 7000 and 3000 BC is a classic example of the interplay between these two processes.
World History
