1998/11/20 by Heather Pringle · 3 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · #Archaeology and ancient environmental studies
paper · doi:10.1126/science.282.5393.1446
openalex publication_date 1998/11/20 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/23
New techniques for tracing the rise of farming are contradicting the view that cities and agriculture emerged together in a single Neolithic Revolution. Tiny plant fossils are allowing archaeologists to spot the first signs of crop domestication thousands of years earlier than had been thought, and to find them in unexpected places, such as the South American rainforest. In many regions, settlements came thousands of years after crops, while in others, villages appear long before intensive agriculture (see p. 1442), implying a long, slow transition to the agrarian way of life. To many researchers, the timing suggests that worldwide environmental change--climate fluctuations at the end of the Ice Age--may well have prompted cultivation.