A major archaeological find in southern Uzbekistan expands the boundaries of ancient humans’ transition from foraging to agriculture.
Scientists agree that farming developed independently around the world including Africa, the Americas, eastern Asia and western Asia. The so-called ‘Fertile Crescent’ is a region in the Middle East and western Asia where key crops such as wheat, barley and legumes are thought to have been first farmed by people about 10,000 years ago.
The 2019 excavations in Toda Cave. Credit: Robert Spengler.
These Neolithic (Late Stone Age) people in the Fertile Crescent, known as the Natufians, went from harvesting wild crops to cultivating them. This major cultural shift allowed the emergence of the first urban civilisations in Mesopotamia.
New findings show that people were harvesting wild barley using sickle blades much further north and east than previously thought.
Results from a 2019 excavation of the Toda Cave in southern Uzbekistan’s Surkhandarya Valley, near the border with Afghanistan, are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
View of the Surkhandarya Valley where Toda Cave is located in southern Uzbekistan. Credit: Robert Spengler.
Digs uncovered stone tools, charcoal and plant remains dating to 9,200 years ago.
Alongside wild barley, ancient plant remains from the oldest layers in the cave include wild pistachio shells and apple seeds.
Wear on the stone tools indicate they were used to cut grass and other plant material. Similar evidence has been found at global archaeological sites where early agriculture is known to have been practiced.
“This discovery should change the way that scientists think about the transition from foraging to farming, as it shows how widespread the transitional behaviours were,” says lead researcher Xinying Zhou from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing, China.
A modern specimen of wild barley with the individual grains naturally shattering off as they become ripe. Robert Spengler.
“These ancient hunters and foragers were already tied into the cultural practices that would lead to the origins of agriculture,” adds investigation leader Robert Spengler from Germany’s Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology.
“A growing body of research suggests that domestication occurred without deliberate human intent, and the finding that people continually developed the behaviours which lead to agriculture supports this view.”