Several thousand years ago, the early modern humans were nomadic foragers, and they forage in groups. However, a major transition occurred around 10,000 BC changing the human behavior, a changeover from the control of the natural environment over humans, to humans in control over the natural environment.
Before the start of the agricultural era, the early humans were hunter-gatherers, which means that they depended on wild resources for their nutritional requirements. This style of living led the early humans to have a largely nomadic lifestyle, with the abundance of food source dictated by the natural environment, specifically the annual cycle of animal and plant availability.
In other words, the early humans shifted from being foragers to farmers. According to the famous biologist Jarred Diamond (1997), the root of the inequality of power in the modern world can be traced back to ancient farming. In other words, some civilizations grew faster, especially where agriculture was efficient. Needless to say, the agricultural revolution of the ancient world had complicated implications than it seemed.
The definite origin of agriculture is difficult to pinpoint, however, technological advancement allowed us to discover the details of ancient agriculture. According to records, one of the most important Neolithic agricultural revolution occurred in a fertile land in Southwest Asia (McMahon, 2005). This area of land is irrigated by rivers, including the Tigris and Euphrates. This strip of fertile land is most commonly known as the Fertile Crescent.
The Fertile Crescent
The Fertile Crescent is an area of land occupied by several countries today, including Egypt, Israel, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq. Two large rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates, run along the stretch of land in Iraq and Syria, while the northern tip of the Nile River runs along the strip of the Fertile Crescent in Egypt (Schumann, 2008). Due to the availability of water nearby, the Fertile Crescent can be thought of as the appropriate farming land.
Moreover, most of the lands Fertile Crescent, especially in the Mesopotamia, is flat. Normally, people from this time would follow where the crops and animals are abundant. However, people found that they could grow crops during seasons when the rivers overflow. As the rivers overflow with water from the rain and melting snow from the mountains, the floodwater carried fine soil called silt, which will then deposit over the flat lands. In other words, the annual floods of the Tigris and Euphrates made the surrounding land, called Mesopotamia, very fertile. This fertility allows plants to thrive, which in turn attracts animals (Schumann, 2008). This kind of abundance of food source made the Fertile Crescent a suitable settlement area for the early modern humans.
Ancient Agriculture in the Fertile Crescent
Archaeologists believe that the origin of agricultural was a series of distinctive episodes occurring at different places at different times. Moreover, the agriculture of various ancient civilizations vary in the type of crops and agricultural animals, depending on the geography of the region. Nonetheless, the start of agriculture implies a critical turning point of human and social behavior, and led to the stabilization of human communities (Brown et al., 2009).
The Fertile Crescent was a very appropriate farming site due to the fertility of the lands brought by the annual flooding of the surrounding rivers. When the early modern humans discovered that the land was fertile, they decided to settle to grow crops, making them the first group to settle and farm. At first, the farming was difficult since they often relied on the yearly unpredictable flooding of the rivers. Moreover, the Fertile Crescent had a semiarid climate, which made the region vulnerable to droughts. During droughts, it was very difficult to grow crops (Carnine et al., 2006).
Around 6,000 BC, the early modern humans discovered a way to supply water to the crops all year round without relying on the floodwater. Farmers in the Fertile Crescent decided to create a system of canals that can carry water from the rivers to their farming lands. This system of canals, called irrigation, was an efficient way to supply water to the plants throughout its entire agricultural season. Moreover, the farmers built dams such that the excess floodwaters would not cause the plants to overhydrate (Carnine et al., 2006).
Crops Grown in the Fertile Crescent
As mentioned before, agriculture arrived at different places at different times. In the Fertile Crescent, the agriculture was more varied relative to the other major centers of plant domestication. Most sources state that the agriculture in the Fertile Crescent comprised of eight founder crops (Brown et al., 2009).
Two of the earliest domesticated plant species were cultivated in the Fertile Crescent, and these crops are the einkorn wheat and the emmer wheat. The einkorn wheat, Triticum monococcum, has two subspecies, the wild einkorn (T. monococcum subsp. boeoticum) and the domesticated einkorn (T. monococcum subsp. monococcum). Einkorn is one of the diploid (2n) species of wheat, and has tough husks enclosing the grains, just like the emmer wheat. Emmer wheat (Triticum turgidum), like the einkorn wheat, had two subspecies, the domesticated emmer wheat (T. turgidum subsp. dicoccum) and the wild emmer wheat (T. turgidum subsp. dicoccoides) (Brown et al., 2009). However, emmer wheat is a tetraploid (4x = 28 chromosomes) as compared to the einkorn wheat, which is a diploid (2n = 14 chromosomes). One other crop that was cultivated in the Fertile Crescent was the barley. Barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) is one of the first plants to be domesticated, but is still one of the most produced crops internationally (Brown et al., 2009).
Aside from these three cereals, two pulses were cultivated in the Fertile Crescent. Lentils (Lens culinaris) and peas (Pisum sativum) were domesticated and cultivated in the Fertile Crescent. The other three founder crops are flax (Linum usatissimum), chickpea (Cicer arietinum) and bitter vetch (Vicia ervilia). Aside from these eight identified founder crops, it was suspected that faba beans could have been one of the crops cultivated in the Fertile Crescent (Brown et al., 2009).
According to biologists, the genetic evolution of wild species of plants was influenced by the manual selection of farmers due to their preferences. For instance, cereals that had more intact grains were preferred, and so, farmers use these for cultivation. After several generations, the dominant cereal type would be those with intact grains. Today, the difference of the wild to the domesticated species of plants is evidenced by their genetic makeup (Brown et al., 2009).
Summary
In summary, the early modern humans changed from being foragers to farmers when they discovered that they could grow plants instead of being controlled by the availability of plants and animals. For this reason, the Fertile Crescent became one of the sites where the first community of early modern humans cultivated plants as their primary food source. The Fertile Crescent is a large stretch of flat land surrounded by major rivers, such as the Tigris, the Euphrates, and the Nile River. The annual flooding of these rivers made the surrounding lands fertile, hence a suitable place for cultivation.
Aided with domesticated farm animals, ancient farmers in the Fertile Crescent grew various crops, including einkorn wheat, emmer wheat, barley, lentils, peas, chickpea, flax, and bitter vetch. These plants are able to grow successfully in the Fertile Crescent because of the fertility of the land. Moreover, the farmers unintendedly guided the genetic evolution of these crops from human selection and preference.
References
Brown, T.A. et al. (2009). The complex origins of domesticated crops in the Fertile Crescent. Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 24(2): 103-109.
Carnine, Douglas et al. (2006). World History: Ancient Civilizations. Evanston, IL: McDougal Littel.
Diamond, Jared (1997). Guns, Germs and Steel. New York, NY: W. W. Norton.
McMahon, Augusta. (2005). From Sedentism to States, 10,000-3000 BCE. In Daniel Snell (Ed.), A Companion to the Ancient Near East (20-33). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.
Schumann, M. J. (2008). Fertile Crescent. In M.E. Ackerman, M.J. Schroeder, J.J. Terry, J.L. Upshur, & M.F. Whitters (Eds.), Encyclopedia of World History (146-148). New York, NY: Facts on File, Inc.
