Figs were mans first crop

Telegraph:

The dawn of agriculture may have come with the domestication of fig trees near Jericho some 11,400 years ago, archaeologists report today.

The discovery of ancient carbonised figs suggests that fruit, rather than grains that are traditionally thought to have heralded agriculture, may yield the earliest evidence of purposeful planting.

The figs date back roughly 1,000 years before wheat, barley and legumes were domesticated in the region, making the fruit trees the oldest known domesticated crop, a team reports today in the journal Science.

Nine small figs and 313 fig fragments were found at -Gilgal I, a village in the Lower Jordan Valley, eight miles north of ancient Jericho, known to have been inhabited for some 200 years before being abandoned roughly 11,200 years ago.

"This is the oldest evidence for deliberate planting of a food-producing plant, as opposed to just gathering food in the wild," says Prof Peter Bellwood of the Australian National University in Canberra.

The find is all the more remarkable because the figs sat ignored for decades. They were collected in the 1970s and 1980s but were forgotten after the Israeli archaeologist who led the excavation died.

Then the Israel Museum in Jerusalem invited Prof Ofer Bar-Yosef, a Harvard University archaeologist, to study the finds.

Today Prof Bar-Yosef and Prof Mordechai Kislev and Anat Hartmann of Bar-Ilan University in Ramat-Gan announce how the figs have a remarkable story to tell about the history of mankind.

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It looks like those UK profs who wanted to stop associating with Israeli scholars are cutting off their own nose and missing out on some exciting finds.