Flint Dibble on archaeology: what the evidence says · JRE #2136
SUBJECT: ARCHAEOLOGY
Not a true/false call. Every claim is logged with its sources; read the exhibits below.
Oh, the oldest seeds we have go back tens of thousands of years. The oldest domesticated crops we have go back about 11,000 years. And where are those from? From Syria, Turkey, the Fertile Crescent area, yeah.
What the evidence says 01 / RECORD
The archaeological and archaeobotanical record supports Dibble's figures. The eight Neolithic founder crops (einkorn and emmer wheat, barley, four pulses, and flax) were domesticated by early farming communities in the Fertile Crescent of Southwest Asia, spanning modern Syria, Turkey, and the Levant. Reviews place the morphological markers of domestication, such as nonshattering cereal seed heads, as well established by around 10,500 calibrated years before present, preceded by a prolonged period of cultivation of morphologically wild plants reaching back to roughly 12,000 cal BP. His round figure of about 11,000 years for the oldest domesticated crops, and the Fertile Crescent (Syria, Turkey) attribution, are consistent with the accepted literature.