Reconstructed setting· The columns of time

First fields

11.7 ka → 3,275 BCE

Flat-roofed houses, cereals in rows, a goat among the buildings and fig trees at the edge. The first landscape our species laid out on purpose rather than merely lived in.

What the evidence shows

Each element is dated. Wild cereals were cultivated in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A, and chaff of domesticated type appears in quantity only afterwards, which is why the ears are drawn in rows rather than scattered. Goats were being managed at Ganj Dareh, in the Zagros, around 8000 BCE, among the earliest herds anywhere. The fig trees are there because hundreds of figs were laid out to dry and kept in early Neolithic villages of the southern Levant by about 11,200 years ago, and storage is the quiet revolution here: a harvest kept is a year survived.

Bounds and conventions

A Near Eastern scene standing in for a global band. Farming was invented independently in at least a dozen regions, and a Chinese, Mesoamerican or West African first field would look nothing like this one, down to the crops and the shape of the roofs.

Sources

1. Zeder, M. A. (2011), Current Anthropology, doi:10.1086/659307
2. Zeder, M. A. (2008), PNAS, doi:10.1073/pnas.0801317105
3. Arranz-Otaegui, A. et al. (2016), PNAS, doi:10.1073/pnas.1612797113
4. Abbo, S., Gopher, A. (2022), Cambridge University Press, doi:10.1017/9781108642491
5. de Groene, D. et al. (2023), Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, doi:10.1016/j.jasrep.2023.103936
6. Fuller, D. Q., Willcox, G., Allaby, R. G. (2011), World Archaeology, doi:10.1080/00438243.2011.624747
7. Kislev, M. E., Hartmann, A., Bar-Yosef, O. (2006), Science, doi:10.1126/science.1125910. Interpretation contestee (Lev-Yadun et al. 2006, Denham 2007) : cueillette de figuiers parthenocarpiques sauvages possible.
8. Whitlam, J., et al. (2023), Vegetation History and Archaeobotany, doi:10.1007/s00334-023-00938-w
9. Langgut, D., Garfinkel, Y. (2022), Scientific Reports, doi:10.1038/s41598-022-10743-6
10. van Zeist, W., de Roller, G. J. (1995), Vegetation History and Archaeobotany, doi:10.1007/bf00203936. Résumé lu.
11. Arranz-Otaegui, A., et al. (2018), Quaternary Science Reviews, doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2018.02.011. Résumé lu.