One of the oldest evidences of agriculture found in Central Asia

The Neolithic period marked ancient humanity's major leap from hunter-gatherers to agriculture. But this development didn't occur in a single location. Instead, agriculture developed in multiple places and times, including the Americas, eastern Asia, and Africa. How it developed depended entirely on location. For example, paleoarchaeologists believe that the first people to cultivate barley, legumes, and wheat around 10,000 years ago were a Levantine culture known as the Natufians. The Natufians lived in the Fertile Crescent, a region of the Middle East that contains the earliest known evidence of agriculture.

According to a study published in Popular Science Turkish, researchers have added new layers to this complex and overlapping history. In a study published three days ago in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, experts have revealed that similar grain cultivation practices may have been occurring simultaneously as far away as 1,500 kilometers (900 miles).

An international team of archaeologists began excavating Toda Cave, a site in the Surkandarya Valley of southern Uzbekistan, in 2019. They unearthed artifacts including charcoal, stone tools, and plant remains from the cave's oldest layers. The findings are at least 9,200 years old, and additional archaeological research has shown that the cave's inhabitants gathered wild barley, pistachios, and apples.

Additional use-wear analysis indicates that this Neolithic community used stone blades and sickle-like stone flakes. These cutting patterns are consistent with other verified agricultural methods worldwide.

"This discovery, which shows how widespread these transformations are, should change how scientists think about the transition from foraging to farming," study co-author Xinying Zhou of the China Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology said in a statement.

Researchers suggest that these discoveries at Toda Cave are directly linked to the emergence of agriculture in ancient hunter-gatherer culture, and that this development occurred almost simultaneously with the Natufians, hundreds of kilometers away.

"A growing body of research suggests that domestication occurred without deliberate intent in humans," explains Robert Spengler, one of the paper's authors and a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Geoanthropology. "The finding that these behaviors that led to agriculture evolved continuously in humans supports this view."

Further study is needed before Xinying, Spengler, and their colleagues can determine the extent of these early traditions across this vast region of Central Asia. The scientists also hope to investigate whether these grains represent one of the earliest examples of wild barley cultivation. If so, this region could represent another ancient center of experimental agriculture. This practice may have occurred separately from the Fertile Crescent or reached the region much earlier than currently thought. Whatever the outcome, the latest findings could provide a better understanding of this larger picture of human technological, social, and agricultural evolution.