How it began
Abu Hureyra was a settlement on the Euphrates in what is now northern Syria. A study led by Gordon Hillman, published in The Holocene in 2001, reported new evidence from the site that systematic cultivation of cereals started well before the end of the Pleistocene, by at least 13,000 years ago, and that rye was among the first crops. Cultivation began at the start of the cold, dry Younger Dryas period. The inhabitants at that time were Epipalaeolithic foragers.
Before it existed
Until this evidence was published, the earliest archaeological finds of domestic cereals in southwestern Asia were wheats and barleys dating from the beginning of the Holocene, 11,000 to 12,000 calendar years ago. The people of Abu Hureyra had lived by gathering wild plants and hunting before they began to cultivate.
How it works
The evidence is botanical. Excavated plant remains include rye grains, and there is a sudden rise in the weeds that typically infest newly disturbed soil, which points to tilled plots, from about 11,050 BCE. Selected grains were dated directly by radiocarbon; one of five proved to be a later Neolithic intrusion. Cereals with the physical form of domesticated plants appear at the site later, around 10,000 years ago.
What lasted
The findings pushed the start of cereal cultivation back by a thousand years or more and placed it among foragers under climatic stress. In light of the Abu Hureyra evidence, the first systematic cultivation of cereal crops is now commonly dated to about 13,000 years ago, with rye as the earliest crop identified.
