{"id":36883,"date":"2013-07-07T18:57:46","date_gmt":"2013-07-07T22:57:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetsave.com\/?p=36883"},"modified":"2013-07-07T18:57:46","modified_gmt":"2013-07-07T22:57:46","slug":"origins-of-agriculture-in-the-fertile-crescent-farming-began-in-several-places-at-once-research-finds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetsave.com\/articles\/origins-of-agriculture-in-the-fertile-crescent-farming-began-in-several-places-at-once-research-finds\/","title":{"rendered":"Origins Of Agriculture In The Fertile Crescent — Farming Began In Several Places At Once, Research Finds"},"content":{"rendered":"

The exact origins of agriculture — if there are any which can be recognized in archaeological records — are something of a mystery. But now, new research has shed some further light on subject — the foothills of the Zagros Mountains of Iran in the eastern Fertile Crescent also served as a key center for early domestication along with the already known early plant domestication that took place in the western and northern Fertile Crescent.<\/p>\n

\""Excavations<\/a>
“Excavations in the Fertile Crescent: T\u00fcbingen archaeologists found evidence of early agriculture at Chogha Golan (1).”
Image Credit: Simone Riehl<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Of course agriculture seems to have arisen independently across a wide variety of regions — and isn’t even unique to people, ants and termites both farm — so it’s an open question when it actually “began”? It’s entirely possible that agriculture of some kind was even present during earlier interglacial periods — though that is certainly not a popular idea in the field currently. As far as current theory is concerned, agriculture began in some regions sometime between 10,000-13,000 BC, in the Fertile Crescent of West Asia. (Authors note: It had previously been though that agriculture was the cause of a subsequent explosion in the world’s human population, but newer research has found that the population began growing rapidly far before agriculture is thought to have emerged.)<\/p>\n

The new findings are the result of research done by the University of T\u00fcbingen, the T\u00fcbingen Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Paleoenvironment, and the Iranian Center for Archaeological Research.<\/p>\n