Maybe the phrase "shakes up" is a little on the dramatic side, because I'm 
not very "shaken up" by the idea that grain domestication occurred 11k 
years ago instead of 10k years ago.  And I don't find it strange at all 
that grain domestication began in more than one place.  In fact I find it 
rather odd to believe otherwise (despite the poetic and culturally-pointed 
symbology of Daniel Quinn's "Ishmael").  But still, it's a find...

According to the Jerusalem Post 18 Jun 06, Bar-Ilan University researchers 
have found a cache of 120,000 wild oat and 260,000 wild barley grains at 
the Gilgal archaeological site near Jericho (Israel) that date back 11,000 
years - providing evidence of cultivation during the Neolithic Period. The 
research, performed by Drs. Ehud Weiss and Anat Hartmann of BIU's 
department of Land of Israel studies and Prof. Mordechai Kislev of the 
faculty of life sciences, appears in the journal "Science."

According to the researchers, the newest find shows that the transition 
from nomadic food gathering and the beginning of agriculture were quite 
different than previously thought. Until now, the general assumption has 
been that agriculture was begun by a single line of human efforts in one 
specific area. But the BIU researchers found a much more complicated effort 
undertaken by different human populations in different regions, drawing a 
completely new picture of the origins of agriculture. Agriculture, the BIU 
researchers suggest, originated through human manipulations of wild plants 
- sometimes involving the same species - that took place in various 
spatially and temporally distinct communities. Moreover, some of these 
occasions were found to be much earlier than previously thought possible.

Short (free) version of the article here:
http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/jpost/access/1063772821.html?dids=1063772821:106 
3772821&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT

Longer (edited?) version here: 
http://www.stonepages.com/news/archives/001919.html

- S.



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