Possible early agriculture at 23,000 BC.

[Apech]

Israeli archaeologists have uncovered dramatic evidence of what they believe are the earliest known attempts at agriculture, 11,000 years before the generally recognised advent of organised cultivation.

 

The study examined more than 150,000 examples of plant remains recovered from an unusually well preserved hunter-gatherer settlement on the shores of the Sea of Galilee in northern Israel.

 

Previously scientists had believed that organised agriculture in the Middle East, including animal husbandry and crop cultivation, had begun round in the late Holocene period – around 12,000 BC – and later spread west through Europe.

 

The new research is based on excavations at a site known as Ohalo II, which was discovered in 1989 when the lake water in the sea of Galilee dropped because of drought and excessive water extraction.

 

Occupied by a community of hunter-gatherers at the height of the last ice age 23,000 years ago, it revealed evidence of six brush huts with hearths as well as stone tools and animal and plant remains.

 

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jul/24/archaeologists-find-possible-evidence-of-earliest-human-agriculture

 

If true this pushes agriculture way back into the Ice Age and thus the possibility that even this is inherited knowledge from much older times.

[Marblehead]

I have no problem accepting this as highly likely just as I have no problem holding the understanding that migrations to the Americas started about 40,000 years ago.

 

The last ice age destroyed much of the evidence of earlier social gatherings (tribes) and agriculture including animal domestication.

 

But science needs evidence.  The article you presented above is a good start.

[Nungali]

Many types of early agriculture has not been found or the remains survived as well as their other cultural artefacts.

 

Further evidence found of this type may help to explain the 'unusual' finds in other places  ; "How on earth did they build this *, it was ages  'before agriculture' ? "

 

Nah!  'Ages before known agriculture. ' 

 

 

* Gobekli tepe    ... and a complex I have  recently been looking into at Orkney ( pre dates Stonehenge and the Great Pyramid ) - The 'Ring of Brodgar' 

 

 

in the middle of a lake, surrounded by a greater ring of mountains, joined by two land bridges with sites the south extending and following a line of sites to Stonehenge ( this is like the 'mystical secret centre of  .... ? whoever they were  ... 'Avalon'  ) 

 

Location location !

 

 

They also found remains of hundreds ( cant remember the number , but it was large)  of cattle, all slaughtered at the one time  for one feast there .

 

 

 

 

Skara Brae ... still got the wardrobes and cupboards ! 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

.... I was talking about this early agriculture recently. 

Edited July 25, 2015 by Nungali