Archeologists have uncovered a 10,000 year-old village in Jordan, where people lived in stone houses, made sculptures, and buried their dead. Inhabitants of the village, named Ain Ghazal, raised barley, wheat, chickpeas, and lentils. Some villagers were gone for months at a time herding goats and sheep.
The Near East seems to have been the cradle of agriculture. Using DNA analysis, scientists have learned that people from India to Ireland have ancestors from that area.
We are still not sure if agriculture began just one time, or if various groups independently invented it. One thing on which the geneticists and archeologists agree is that agricultural knowledge crossed the Bosporus about 8000 years ago, and then spread across Europe, where hunter-gatherers had existed for about 30,000 years.
I am amazed at what we can learn. I am also amazed that it took us about 10,000 years to completely screw up our planet, and some of us aren’t even aware of that fact.
If you want to read the whole article on this topic, it is in today’s New York Times. See Carl Zimmer, “The First Farmers,” p. D1, D6, in the Science Section. Here’s the link:
<http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/18/science/ancient-farmers-archaeology-dna.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0>. At least I think that’s the link.
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