Impetus for sowing and the beginning of agriculture: ground collecting of wild cereals

Abstract

The Agricultural Revolution in Western Asia, which took place some 11,000 years ago, was a turning point in human history [Childe, V. G. (1952) New Light on the Most Ancient East (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London)]. In investigating the cultural processes that could have led from gathering to intentional cultivation, various authors have discussed and tested wild cereal harvesting techniques. Some argue that Near Eastern foragers gathered grains by means of sickle harvesting, uprooting, plucking (hand stripping), or beating into baskets [Hillman, G. C. & Davies, M. S. (1999) in Prehistory of Agriculture: New Experimental and Ethnographic Approaches, ed. Anderson, P. (The Institute of Archaeology, University of California, Los Angeles), pp. 70-102]. During systematic experiments, we found that archaeobotanical data from regional Neolithic sites support ground collection of grains by early hunter-gatherers. Ground collecting suits the natural shattering of wild species that ripen and drop grains at the beginning of summer. We show that continual collection off the ground from May to October would have provided surplus grains for deliberate sowing in more desirable fields, and facilitate the transition to intentional cultivation. Because ground gathering enabled collectors to observe that fallen seeds are responsible for the growth of new plants in late fall, they became aware of the profitability of sowing their surplus seeds for next year's food. Ground collecting of wild barley and wild wheat may comprise the missing link between seed collecting by hunter-gatherers and cereal harvesting by early farmers.

Fig. 1.

Thick “carpet” of easy-to-collect barley spikelets bearing persistent long awns (Korazim 9.5.2000). The length of the awns, such as those of the horizontal spikelet at the top, measures 20 cm.

Fig. 2.

Collar: an organ that is found in sickle-harvested products but not in hand-collected yields. The photograph shows a culm of modern wild emmer bearing two sterile spikelets after shedding all fertile ones. Each spikelet has two attached glumes. The culm's uppermost node, and to some extent the lowest node of the rachis, is extended into a collar. The zigzag represents the highest harvesting point. The image was taken with a scanning electron micrograph.