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The role of Neolithic farmer dispersal in establishing current global patterns of languages and geographical races is discussed. Topics include the origins and dispersals of agricultural societies and language families, the perspective from archaeology, the perspectives from history and anthropology, the perspective from linguistics, and the perspective from biological anthropology.

Research on the ancestral Ontario Iroquoian Princess Point Complex in south-central Ontario, Canada, reveals that the Grand River floodplain was an important area for maize production. A case study on archaeological occupation in relation to the setting during the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture depicts the exploitation of floodplain habitats.

The progression in the use of wood materials for domestic architecture in Neolithic villages of lakes Chalain and Clairvaux in Jura, France can be associated with population growth. The state of the forests influenced the habitation cycles of villages, which were built on marshes and moist soils. This necessitated adaptations in architecture, such as building houses with elevated floors and covering the soil with sticks. The structures were well preserved, allowing for detailed studies of manipulation of the woods by inhabitants and the growth of forest species.

Over the past two decades there has been a proliferation of studies that reveal a far greater diversity in the pathways to food production worldwide than would have been predicted by traditional models of the Neolithic Revolution. It would now appear that, while there are certain universal elements in the origins of food production, each instance of the incorporation of domestic resources into the subsistence economy is shaped by highly localized social and natural forces. It is perhaps not surprising, then, to find that the times after the Neolithic Revolution do not conform to earlier uniformitarian conceptions of the origin of food production as either a technological blessing or an environmental blight that locked people into an economy based solely on domestic resources. This examination of subsistence at Umm Qseir, one small post-Neolithic community in the Khabur Drainage of Northern Mesopotamia, highlights the remarkable degree of flexibility and individualized response in post-Neolithic economies in the Near East, especially in marginal areas. The incorporation of both domestic and wild resources into the economy of inhabitants of this site is further shown not to be just an isolated curiosity. Rather, Umm Qseir joins a number of other post-Neolithic communities situated in marginal areas, persisting several millennia after the first introduction of domestic crops and animals, that also fashioned highly individualized subsistence economies based on both wild and domestic resources. In the Khabur Drainage, the blending of domestic and wild resources in the subsistence of people situated in more arid areas is replaced by a more 'conventional' agropastoral economy only with development of urbanism and the imposition of an agricultural economy of scale on this fragile environment.

The time, place, and reasons for the first domestication of cereals and legumes in the Near East can now be securely identified using combined evidence from paleoenvironmental studies, models of ecosystem dynamics, and regional archeology. The heartland of domestication was the Jordan Valley and surrounding region in the Southern Levant. Approximately 10,000 years ago, people began planting crops where the wild ancestral species had proliferated over two millenia. Impetus for domestication came from the synergistic effects of climatic change, anthropogenic environmental change, technological change, and social innovation. At the end of the Pleistocene, after a long period of climatic instability, a mediterranean climate more strongly seasonal than any today emerged with hyper-arid summers that selected for annual species of cereals and legumes. This occurred long after people had invented tools suitable for grinding hard seeds, but the new, lengthy dry season and consequent need to use stored foods encouraged sedentism among human groups who subsequently depleted their immediate environments of wild resources. These preconditions facilitated the development of agriculture. The scenario developed here is specific to the Near East, for such case studies of specific factors in independent regions of domestication are essential before we attempt to explain cases all over the world with reference to global causes.

Calibrated radiocarbon dates of 19 samples excavated since 1976 at the site of Cuello, in northern Belize, place the Swasey phase (11 dates) and Bladen phase (8 dates) in the Middle Formative period, rather than in the Early Formative, as 10 dates on charcoal excavated in 1975 and 1976 indicated. The post-1976 dates for both phases fall between about 1100 and 400 B.C., and the two sets do not appear to differ significantly. All except 3 of the 35 archaeologically acceptable dates from the later Lopez Mamom and Cocos Chicanel contexts fall within the conventionally accepted ranges for those phases. A mixture of old charcoal from the environment or from an unidentified pre-Swasey occupation with the 1975-1976 samples may explain their early radiocarbon ages, although why such mixing should have affected only the 1975-1976 samples is not known. This reassessment of the early Cuello sequence aligns it with comparable cultural developments elsewhere in the Maya area and suggests that the earliest farming communities of northern Belize perhaps derived from the highlands of Guatemala. Fechas calibradas de radiocarbon de 19 muestras excavadas desde 1976 en Cuello, en el norte de Belice, situan a las fases Swasey (11 fechas) y Bladen (8 fechas) en el periodo Formativo Medio, mas bien que en el Formativo Temprano, como indicaron 10 fechas de carbon procedentes de 1975 y 1976. Las fechas recientes de ambas fases caen entre aproximadamente 1100 y 400 A.C., y los dos grupos no parecen diferir significativamente. De las 35 fechas aceptables asociadas con material de las fases Lopez Mamom y Cocos Chicanel, todas menos tres caen dentro de los limites convencionales para estas fases. Una mezcla de las muestras de 1975 y 1976 con carbon viejo del medio ambiente o de una ocupacion pre-Swasey hasta ahora no identificada, nos ayudaria a explicar las fechas muy tempranas, sin embargo, no se sabe por que este problema afecto solamente a las muestras de 1975 y 1976. La presente reevaluacion de la secuencia temprana de Cuello sicroniza esta con tendencias culturales comparables en otras regiones de las tierras bajas mayas y nos sugiere que los primeros pobladores agricolas del norte de Belice talvez procedian del altiplano de Guatemala.

Cobs of the earliest known archaeological maize from San Marcos Cave in the Tehuacan Valley were reexamined to estimate their morphological similarity to extant Mexican maize races. Cursory examination of these 7,000-year-old specimens aroused suspicion that they are not very closely related morphologically to any thusfar-described modern Mexican race. Statistical comparison of the Tehuacan specimens with 30 races of Mexican maize fully confirmed this suspicion. However, the inclusion in our statistical analysis of an extant race of popcorn from Argentina morphologically similar to the Tehuacan specimens indicated that the two were virtually indistinguishable. These findings imply that the earliest maize from Tehuacan already was fully domesticated, its cobs exhibiting a morphology one would expect had maize evolved from teosinte by way of catastrophic sexual transmutation (Iltis 1983). Los olotes mas antiguos de la cueva San Marcos del valle de Tehuacan se examinan aqui para estimar su semejanza morfologica con razas de maiz mexicano modernas. Un estudio general de estos especimenes, que supuestamente tienen una edad de 7.000 anos, nos hizo suponer que estos no guardan mucha similitud con ninguna raza mexicana moderna descrita hasta hoy. Comparacion estadistica de los especimenes de Tehuacan con 30 razas de maiz confirmo por completo esta suposicion, sin embargo, al incluir en nuestros analisis estadisticos una raza de maiz reventon de Argentina morfologicamente similar a los especimenes de Tehuacan, encontramos que estos son virtualmente indistinguibles. Estos resultados implican que el maiz mas antiguo de Tehuacan representa una especie que ya fue domesticada, mostrando sus olotes una morfologia que uno esperaria si el maiz evolucionara de teosinte por medio de transmutacion sexual catastrofica (Iltis 1983).

The emergence of agriculture in the Near East also involved the domestication of einkorn wheat. Phylogenetic analysis that was based on the allelic frequency at 288 amplified fragment length polymorphism molecular marker loci indicates that a wild group of Triticum monococcum boeoticum lines from the Karacadag mountains (southeast Turkey) is the likely progenitor of cultivated einkorn varieties. Evidence from archeological excavations of early agricultural settlements nearby supports the conclusion that domestication of einkorn wheat began near the Karacadag mountain, Wild einkorn wheat, Triticum monococcum subsp. bocoticum, is the wild relative of the domesticated einkom wheat T. m. monococcum (1-3). In the Near East, primary habitats of T. m. boeoticum [...]

Squash seeds, peduncles, and fruit rind fragments from Archaic period stratigraphic zones of Guila Naquitz cave in Oaxaca, Mexico, are assigned to Cucurbita pepo on the basis of diagnostic morphological characters and identified as representing a domesticated plant on the basis of increased seed length and peduncle diameter, as well as changes in fruit shape and color, in comparison to wild gourds. Nine accelerator mass spectrometer radiocarbon dates on these specimens document the cultivation of C. pepo by the inhabitants of Guila Naquitz cave between 10,000 to 8000 calendar years ago (9000 to 7000 carbon-14 years before the present), which predates maize, beans, and other directly dated domesticates in the Americas by more than 4000 years., The initial domestication of plants and animals and the transition from hunting and gathering to an agricultural way of life occurred independently in at least seven different primary centers of [...]

When did hunter-gatherers begin trading the wild life for farming and herding? Creative techniques offer new answers to agriculture's oldest question The stuff of early agriculture is garbage. Charred plant [...]

The causes of the adoption of agricultural subsistence have elicited much speculation. Most early models portrayed the adoption of agriculture, termed the Neolithic Revolution, as an important positive event in human history. However, palaeopathological research from many regions of the world suggests that agriculture may have had deleterious effects on human health. In the fertile crescent of Southwest Asia, where the earliest archaeological evidence for agriculture occurs, there is limited knowledge concerning the health status of early agricultural populations. This paper assesses the skeletal consequences of the adoption of agricultural subsistence strategies in a small skeletal sample (N=6) from the Neolithic village of Bouqras in the Euphrates valley of central Syria. The site, dated to ca 6,000 BC, is located at the southern-most limits of non-irrigation agriculture. The skeletal remains were examined with respect to macroscopic lesion morphology and the intra-skeletal distribution of the lesions. Three distinct morphological lesion types, each affecting a different skeletal element, are present. Through differential diagnosis, the possible pathological and/or activity-related aetiologies are assessed. The interrelationships between health status and subsistence strategy are discussed.

Since the 1930s, botanists and archaeologists have suggested that plant domestication developed independently in a few core areas and spread from there across the world. With its diversity of root [...]

The appearance of agriculture in the Nile Valley occurs some 2000 years after its development in Europe and the Near East. The major cultigens are the same in these areas. It has been hypothesized by some researchers that agriculture emerges in the Nile Valley concomitant with the arrival of speakers of the Afro-Asiatic language family, both being brought after the differentiation of the Nostratic macofamily speech community. In this view agriculture (and Afro-Asiatic) come from Europe, the locale of the Nostratic cradle in this model. A phenetic craniometric analysis of early farmers from the Nile Valley of Upper Egypt was undertaken in order to explore this hypothesis. Badarian crania were studied with European and African series from the Howells' database, using generalized distances and cluster analyses (neighbour joining and UPGMA algorithms). Greater affinity is found with the African series. The results are considered with a variety of linguistic and archaeological evidence, as well as the findings of simulation studies relevant to this study. It is concluded that the earliest Nile Valley farmers in Upper Egypt for which there is record were locals, not European immigrants, and therefore that the development of agriculture in this region was not due to demic diffusion ultimately from Europe. The problems with phenetic affinity studies considered in isolation from other evidence will be discussed, as well as the flaws of thinking in terms of absolute identity, and not relative similarity.

Advent and Course of Pastoralism in the Kalahari WHEN THE PRINCIPAL ETHNOGRAPHIC STUDIES OF southern African peoples, then called 'Bushmen' (1), were undertaken in the 1950's and 1960's, very little [...]

Origins of Agriculture in Eastern North America THE DEVELOPMENT OF AGRICULTURE HAS LONG BEEN CONsidered a major milestone in human evolution. During the past 10,000 years agricultural economies have also [...]

A team of archaeologists hastily excavated the Abu Hureyra site in Syria during 1972 and 1973, rushing to glean what knowledge they could before the mound was covered by water from a man-made lake. Examining the artifacts and data gathered in so short a time has taken 25 years, and sparked exciting discoveries about the human social transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture and sedentary herding. Because of the continuous occupation of Abu Hureyra for 4,500 years and the wealth of material gathered there, researchers were able to document the human agricultural revolution in great detail.

Human history's most important event since the last Ice Age was the first rise of agriculture in Southwest Asia's Fertile Crescent. The origin of agriculture triggered a long train of [...]