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82 - Domesticating Plants in the Near East

from Part VI: - Humans in the Levant

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 May 2017

Yehouda Enzel
Affiliation:
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Ofer Bar-Yosef
Affiliation:
Harvard University, Massachusetts
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Summary

Packages of nutritionally and agronomically balanced crop plants evolved independently in world regions such as sub-Saharan Africa, Meso-America, North-east America, East Asia, and the Near East. The Near East, on which we elaborate, has the longest research tradition on the origins of agriculture. Geobotanical and ecological evidence on the wild progenitors in conjunction with archaeological and archaeobotanical data of the Near Eastern crop package species, as well as genetic studies enable to reconstruct this major event in the prehistory of humankind. The accumulated evidence from the Near East suggests a one event, conscious, knowledge-based, geographically focused (centered) domestication of a suite of cereals and grain legume crops in southeastern Turkey and northern Syria. Genetic and agronomic considerations enable to draw a distinction between the crucial traits underlying the domestication episode and traits that were selected for by farmers during the millennia following (under) domestication. This distinction is valuable for both reconstructing prehistoric events and for future crop improvement.
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Chapter
Information
Quaternary of the Levant
Environments, Climate Change, and Humans
, pp. 737 - 742
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2017

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