Plant Domestication and the Origins of Agriculture in the Ancient Near East

Rapid and knowledge-based agricultural origins and plant domestication in the Neolithic Near East gave rise to Western civilizations.

Shahal Abbo (Author), Avi Gopher (Author), Gila Kahila Bar-Gal (Author)

9781108493642, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 24 March 2022

288 pages
25.9 x 18.2 x 1.8 cm, 0.76 kg

The Agricultural Revolution – including the domestication of plants and animals in the Near East – that occurred 10,500 years ago ended millions of years of human existence in small, mobile, egalitarian communities of hunters-gatherers. This Neolithic transformation led to the formation of sedentary communities that produced crops such as wheat, barley, peas, lentils, chickpeas and flax and domesticated range of livestock, including goats, sheep, cattle and pigs. All of these plants and animals still play a major role in the contemporary global economy and nutrition. This agricultural revolution also stimulated the later development of the first urban centres. This volume examines the origins and development of plant domestication in the Ancient Near East, along with various aspects of the new Man-Nature relationship that characterizes food-producing societies. It demonstrates how the rapid, geographically localized, knowledge-based domestication of plants was a human initiative that eventually gave rise to Western civilizations and the modern human condition.

1. What Is the Agricultural Revolution?
2. From Hunters-Gatherers to Farmers in the Near East: Archaeological Background
3. Models that Describe and Explain the Agricultural Revolution, Including Plant Domestication
4. The Plant Formations of the Fertile Crescent and the Wild Progenitors of the Domesticated Founder Crops in the Near East
5. The Difference Between Wild and Domesticated Plants
6. Traditional versus Modern Agriculture
7. The Differences between Plant Domestication and Crop Evolution under Traditional and Modern Farming Systems
8. The Differences between Cereal and Legume Crops in the Near East
9. The Choice of Plant Species as Domestication Candidates
10. Where and When Did Near Eastern Plant Domestication Occur?
11. Domestication of Fruit Trees in the Near East
12. Plant Evolution under Domestication
13. A Global View of Plant Domestication in Other World Regions: Asia, Africa and America
14. Animal domestication in the Near East
15. Plant Domestication and Early Near Eastern Agriculture: Summary and Conclusions.

Subject Areas: Archaeological science, methodology & techniques [HDW], Prehistoric archaeology [HDDA], Archaeology by period / region [HDD]