The First Farmers

15.5 ka – 1,552 BCE48 items

farminghumans
The excavated enclosures of Göbekli Tepe, south-east Turkey, 2011. Photo: Teomancimit. CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
The excavated enclosures of Göbekli Tepe, south-east Turkey, 2011. Photo: Teomancimit. CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Seven times, at least, from scratch

For almost all of their history people lived on what they could gather and hunt. Then, within a few thousand years of the end of the last ice age, people on several continents began to sow, herd and select, each without knowing the others existed. Wheat and goats in the Fertile Crescent, rice and millet in China, maize and squash in Mexico, potatoes and llamas in the Andes, taro and bananas in New Guinea, cattle and sorghum in the Sahara and Sahel, sunflowers in the eastern woodlands of North America.

How to read it

  • Centres as bands — each independent centre of domestication runs from its first cultivation to the point where this story leaves it

  • Sites and crops as events — nested inside their centre, pinned where they were dug up

  • Context bands — the Natufian foragers, the Younger Dryas cold snap, the green Sahara, and two sites, Göbekli Tepe and Çatalhöyük, that tell their own story

Threads to follow

  • plants — every crop, from einkorn to sunflower

  • animals — dogs, goats, sheep, cattle, pigs, llamas

  • genetics — what DNA says about where and how often

  • fertile crescent, china, americas, pacific, africa — one centre at a time

Dates are calibrated radiocarbon years before present, where “present” is 1950, and carry the uncertainty the dating studies give. Domestication was slow: a crop is called domesticated when its seeds stop shattering or its bones change shape, often a thousand years or more after people first tended the wild plant or herd, so every date here is a first sign, not a moment.

Items

  1. Natufian culture

    3,400 years

  2. Green Sahara (African Humid Period)

    9,300 years

  3. Bread at Shubayqa 1

    Shubayqa 1, Black Desert, north-east Jordan

  4. The Bonn-Oberkassel dog

    Quarry at Oberkassel, Bonn

  5. Rye at Abu Hureyra

    Abu Hureyra, now under Lake Assad, Syria

  6. Younger Dryas

    1,200 years

  7. Fertile Crescent: wheat, barley and flocks

    3,200 years

  8. Göbekli Tepe

    1,400 years · Göbekli Tepe, near Şanlıurfa

  9. Holocene begins

  10. Barley in the Zagros foothills

    Chogha Golan, Ilam province, Iran

  11. Sahara and Sahel: cattle, sorghum and millet

    6,500 years

  12. The tower of Jericho

    Tell es-Sultan, Jericho

  13. South America: squash, manioc, potatoes and llamas

    6,000 years

  14. Mesoamerica: squash and maize

    5,500 years

  15. Yangtze: rice

    4,500 years

  16. Yellow River: millets

    3,500 years

  17. Einkorn wheat

    Karacadağ mountains, south-east Turkey

  18. Cattle from the aurochs

  19. New Guinea Highlands: taro and bananas

    6,200 years

  20. Pigs at Çayönü

    Çayönü, near Ergani, Diyarbakır

  21. Forest islands of the Llanos de Moxos

    Forest islands, Llanos de Moxos, Bolivia

  22. Penned sheep at Aşıklı Höyük

    Aşıklı Höyük, Aksaray, Turkey

  23. Squash, peanut and cotton in the Ñanchoc valley

    Ñanchoc valley, upper Zaña, Peru

  24. Cattle at Nabta Playa

    Nabta Playa, Western Desert, Egypt

  25. Rice at Shangshan

    Shangshan, Pujiang, Zhejiang

  26. Millet pits at Cishan

    Cishan, Wu’an, Hebei

  27. Squash at Guilá Naquitz

    Guilá Naquitz cave, near Mitla, Oaxaca

  28. Goats at Ganj Dareh

    Ganj Dareh, Kermanshah, Iran

  29. First gardens at Kuk Swamp

    Kuk Swamp, Wahgi valley, Papua New Guinea

  30. A cat buried in Cyprus

    Shillourokambos, near Limassol, Cyprus

  31. Çatalhöyük

    1,150 years · Çatalhöyük, Konya plain

  32. Mehrgarh

    Mehrgarh, Kachi plain, Balochistan

  33. Maize from teosinte

    Xihuatoxtla rock shelter, Balsas valley

  34. Jiahu: flutes and the oldest known fermented drink

    Jiahu, Wuyang, Henan

  35. Farming reaches Europe

  36. Donkeys in eastern Africa

  37. Stone circle at Nabta Playa

    Nabta Playa, Western Desert, Egypt

  38. Domestic rice at Hemudu and Tianluoshan

    Hemudu and Tianluoshan, Yuyao, Zhejiang

  39. Banana mounds at Kuk

    Kuk Swamp, Wahgi valley, Papua New Guinea

  40. The oldest maize cobs

    Guilá Naquitz cave, near Mitla, Oaxaca

  41. Llamas and alpacas at Telarmachay

    Telarmachay, Junín puna, Peru

  42. Farming reaches Britain

  43. Sorghum at KG23

    KG23, near Kassala, eastern Sudan

  44. Eastern North America: seed crops

    1,200 years

  45. Sunflower at the Hayes site

    Hayes site, Duck River, Tennessee

  46. Potatoes at Jiskairumoko

    Jiskairumoko, Ilave valley, Peru

  47. Pearl millet in the Tilemsi valley

    Karkarichinkat, Tilemsi valley, Mali

  48. Drainage ditches at Kuk

    Kuk Swamp, Wahgi valley, Papua New Guinea