an additional datum:

Kislev, M.E., E. Weiss and A. Hartmann. 2004. “Impetus for Sowing and the Beginning of Agriculture: Ground Collecting of Wild Cereals,” Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. (USA) 101:2692-2695.

The agricultural revolution in Western Asia, which took place some 11,000 years ago, was a turning point in human history [Childe, V.G. (1952) New Light on the Most Ancient East (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London)]. In investigating the cultural processes that could have led from gathering to intentional cultivation, various authors have discussed and tested wild cereal harvesting techniques. Some argue that Near East foragers gathered grains by means of sickle harvesting, uprooting, plucking (hand stripping), or beating into baskets [Hilman, G.C. & Davies, M.S. (1999) in Prehistory of Agriculture: New Experimental and Ethnographic Approaches, ed. Anderson, P. (The Institute of Archaeology, University of California, Los Angeles), pp. 70-102]. During systematic experiments, we found that archaeobotanical data from regional Neolithic sites support ground collection of grains by early hunter-gatherers. Ground collecting suits the natural shattering of wild species that ripen and drop grains at the beginning of summer. We show that continual collection off the ground from May to October would have provided surplus grains for deliberate sowing in more desirable fields, and facilitate the transition to intentional cultivation. Because ground gathering enabled collectors to observe that fallen seeds are responsible for the growth of new plants in late fall, they became aware of the profitability of sowing their surplus seeds for next year’s food. Ground collecting of wild barley and wild wheat may comprise the missing link between seed collecting by hunter-gatherers and cereal harvesting by early farmers.

p. 2694 “Cereals were the first crops to be taken into agriculture in Western Asia. Wild barley and wild emmer are common annual grasses that combine large, durable seeds (30), with prolonged availability on the ground, and long persistent awns. Other grasses, which have short or deciduous awns, could not be easily collected by hand from the ground. Wild barley and wild emmer were, therefore, the easiest grasses to exploit. Indeed, seeds of many other grasses were collected before the cultivation and eventual domestication of cereals, but the advantages of emmer and barley, and the fact that humans could collect them throughout the long summer season, made them preadapted candidates for domestication.”


Bernard