# The Origins of Agriculture in the Near East - - - ### p1 plant and animal domestication happened roughly at the same time in many different places > While in 1995 there appeared to have been at least a 1,500-year gap between plant and animal domestication, it now seems that both occurred at roughly the same time, with initial management of morphologically wild future plant and animal domesticates reaching back to at least 11,500 cal BP, if not earlier. A focus on the southern Levant as the core area for crop domestication and diffusion has been replaced by a more pluralistic view that sees domestication of various crops and livestock occurring, sometimes multiple times in the same species, across the entire region. ### p1 domestication markers for cereals and animals include tough rachis and size changes > In cereals, the marker of choice was the development of a tough rachis, a change in the plant's dispersal mechanism thought to arise when humans sowed harvested cereal grains. In pulses, the primary domestication marker was an increase in seed size, a response to seedbed pressures that allowed sown seeds to germinate more quickly and shade out competing seedlings. In animals, archaeozoologists relied primarily on the demonstration of overall body-size reduction, held to be a rapid response to herd management I think these markers have been deprecated! - Used for [[2021.03.29 Agriculture]] - Used for [[domestication markers indicate new methods not domestication date]] ### p5 > presence of distinctive complexes of weedy species characteristic of fields under human cultivation suggests that humans were actively tilling and tending wild stands of einkorn and rye at both Abu Hureyra and nearby Mureybit during the Late Epipaleolithic (ca. 13,000-12,000 cal BP ### p6 > New Archaeological Insights into Animal Domestication Caprines. The utility of morphological markers as leading edge indicators of livestock domestication is even more problematic. This is especially true of body-size reduction, the primary marker used to document animal domestication for the past 30 years. Recent analysis of modern and archaeological skeletal assemblages from the Zagros region has shown that sex and, to a lesser extent, temperature are the most important factors affecting body size in both sheep (Ovis aries) and goats (Capra hircus). Domestic status, on the other hand, has no effect on the size of female caprines and only a limited effect on males, manifested as a decrease in the degree of sexual dimorphism (Zeder 2001, 2005). This work has also shown that apparent evidence of domestication-induced body-size reduction in Near Eastern archaeological assemblages is not, as had been assumed, the result of a morphological response to human management. Instead, the apparent shift toward smaller animals is an artifact of the different culling strategies employed by hunters, whose interest in maximizing the return of the hunt often results in an archaeological assemblage dominated by large prime-age males (Stiner 1990), and herders, who seek to maximize the long-term growth of a herd by culling young males and delaying the slaughter of females until they have passed peak reproductive years (Redding 1981). Because of various taphonomic factors and methodological practices, the herder's harvest strategy produces an archaeological assemblage dominated by smaller adult females (Zeder 2001, 2008). Comparing assemblages of hunted prey animals primarily made up of large adult males with those of harvested managed animals dominated by smaller females led to the erroneous conclusion that domestication-induced body-size reduction had taken place. This is a useful update to [[The Horse The Wheel And Language by David Anthony]] — #pkm/synthesize with [[Anthony V. Taylor on Early Pastoral Economies on the Eurasian Plains]]. ### p6 > it is clear that by at least 11,500 years ago, humans had brought a number of plant species under cultivation and that except for the manifestation of certain morphological traits seen in later-domesticated varieties, these plants might arguably be considered domesticated crops. - Added to [[domestication]] ### p6 > The consistent size difference between the skeletal elements of male and female caprines, however, makes it possible to compute sex-specific harvest profiles for sheep and goats that are capable of distinguishing the herding harvest signature from the hunter's prey strategy. a useful thing to references for [[Anthony V. Taylor on Early Pastoral Economies on the Eurasian Plains]] ### p7 domestication probably predates archaeological proof of domestication by about a thousand years > As with plants, it now seems that the leading edge of animal management stretches back at least 1,000 years before the manifestation of archaeologically detectable morphological change in managed animals. ### p7 we don't know much about how cows were domesticated in the Near East > The outlines of cattle (Bos taurus) domestication in the Near East are still sketchy ### p8 pigs and dogs had similar domestication paths as increasingly unwary scavengers > Like pigs, dogs are animals thought to have entered into domestication through a commensal route initiated when less wary individuals approached human habitations to scavenge for food ### p9 goat domestication was part of a regional economic strategy predating morphological changes in the animals > all six modern maternal lineages of domestic goats were brought under initial human management in a region that stretches from the eastern Taurus to the southern Zagros and Iranian Plateau. Although this process apparently involved individual communities taking local populations of wild goats under control, the geographic proximity of these populations and the evident human-mitigated movement of animals across this region suggests that these activities were part of a more broad-based, culturally connected set of economic strategies. Persistence of the genetic signature of these activities among modern bezoars adds support to archaeological indications of a long period of active and intentional human management of animals before the manifestation of archaeologically detectable morphological change in managed animals. ### p10 domestication markers probably don't indicate the beginning of domestication but rather changes in management practices > In cereals, the transition from brittle to tough rachises may actually have been the result of changes in harvest timing and technology that took place well after people began sowing harvested seed stock. In pulses, seed-size change lagged behind changes in seed dormancy and plant yield that cannot be detected in the archaeological record. In animals, the impact of human management on body size is now known to have been restricted to a decrease in the degree of sexual dimorphism; alterations in skull morphology may have resulted from a developing commensal relationship rather than a two-way domestic partnership; and changes in horn size and form may, like changes in rachis morphology, have reflected a change in management practice rather than the initiation of animal management. In fact, in both plants and animals, archaeologically detectable morphological indicators of domestication may have occurred only once managed plants and animals were isolated from free-living populations and the opportunity for introgression or restocking managed populations with wild ones was eliminated. While some may prefer not to call a plant or an animal a domesticate until this separation has occurred, concentrating solely on this late stage of the process will not help us understand how it began. ### p10 archaeological evidence has shifted our understanding of domestication timelines since 1995 > The emerging picture of plant and animal domestication and agricultural origins in the Near East is dramatically different from that drawn 16 years ago in the landmark Bar-Yosef and Meadow (1995) article. In 1995, there appeared to have been at least a 1,500-year gap between initial crop domestication (ca. 11,400 cal BP) and livestock domestication (ca. 10,000 cal BP). It now seems that plant and animal domestication occurred at roughly the same time, with signs of initial management of morphologically wild future plant and animal domesticates reaching back to at least 11,500 cal BP, if not earlier. ### p11 agriculture is a form of ecosystem engineering > domestication and agriculture arose in the context of broad-based systematic human efforts at modifying local environments and biotic communities to encourage plant and animal resources of economic interest, a practice that has been characterized as human niche construction or ecosystem engineering useful for the [[GeneE]] universe. Also #nonfic/article to learn more about this concept. [[Newsletter Ideas]] - could explore more about human niche construction/ecosystem engineering. ### p11 classification is difficult > This broad middle ground between wild and domestic, foraging and farming, hunting and herding makes it hard to draw clean lines of demarcation between any of these states. - [i] another good of the [[Tt2021-05 On History]] problem that classification is hard, so I created [[classification is hard - twitter 2021-06-06]] ### p11 people who colonized Cyprus brought a lot of different types of wild animals with them > What is perhaps even more interesting about the Cyprus data is that people also imported fallow deer and foxes to the island, as well as other elements of the mainland biotic community that do not appear to have been subjected to the same degree of human control. People who colonized Cyprus in the eleventh millennium did not selectively choose to import only those plants and animals with which they had a developing domestic partnership. Instead, they seem to have transported from the mainland their entire ecological niche, made up of a wide range of economically important species exploited with a diverse array of more and less intensive strategies. It is unlikely that these early pioneers drew strict classificatory boundaries between resources collected from free-living populations, resources that required a higher degree of encouragement and protection from competition or predation, and resources that had begun to show physiological, behavioral, or morphological responses to human management. They simply took with them the world that they knew. [[Article & Blog Idea]]: Compare to importing animals to Australia and the USA. ### p11 > The finer-resolution picture we are now able to draw of this process in the Near East (and, as seen in the other contributions to this volume, in other world areas) not only makes it impossible to identify any threshold moments when wild became domestic or hunting and gathering became agriculture but also shows that drawing such distinctions actually impedes rather than improves our understanding of this process. Instead of continuing to try to pigeonhole these concepts into tidy definitional categories, a more productive approach would be to embrace the ambiguity of this middle ground and continue to develop tools that allow us to watch unfolding developments within this neither-nor territory ### p12 > In 2011, we are clearly on the cusp of a new understanding of agricultural origins in the Near East and elsewhere. One can only imagine what the picture will look like in 2025. - [Tweeted](https://twitter.com/EleanorKonik/status/1458949912603865115) & [Tooted](https://scholar.social/@eleanorkonik/107261185187613414): "What's the best resource to see the state of the meta in 2021?"