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Archeologists have uncovered surprisingly sophisticated grain storage that predates plant domestication.

An excavation site near the Dead Sea in Jordan has revealed an 11,000-year-old granary, which even had elevated floors to prevent rodent pilfering and to increase air circulation.

The stone and mud building was capped with a wattle roof (branches or reeds woven around poles) was about 9.8 feet (3 meters) in diameter. The findings, reported earlier this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reveal wild barley as one of the ancient building's contents. Two nearby structures also appear to have been used for food and grain processing.

People in the Early Natufian period (15,000 to 12,800 years ago) were fairly sedentary but appear to have depended largely on the day-to-day availability of wild plants and animals for food, rather than food stores. But by 11,000 years ago, people seem to have made great strides, building silos and these more complex granaries.

The structures "represent a critical evolutionary shift in the relationship between people and plant foods," the study authors write. This step "precedes the emergence of domestication and large-scale sedentary communities by at least 1,000 years."

This sort of development may have begun early human settlements on their way to a better understanding of the potential of plants—and what would eventually become agriculture.


Interpretive rendition of the granary, courtesy of the National Academy of Sciences, PNAS

5 Comments

1. 1. eco-steve 05:19 PM 6/24/09

   Is there any chance that people had any gardens before -11000? Or did they do any tree-selecting so as to promote fruit or nut trees etc?
   (Australian aborigenes burnt the original inland forests tens of thousands of years ago to encourage vegetation that favoured the sort of game they preferred to hunt...).

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2. 2. Jason Seale 11:23 PM 6/24/09

   I would not be surprised if some level of cultivation or husbandry had developed, given the apparent sophistication of harvesting and food storage. When such great care and thought is given to the collecting and caching of life-sustaining resources, it seems natural to assume that some nurturing of the same would also develop. Even ants have developed farming types of behaviour. How much more likely would such behaviour be to occur in humans in such a setting?

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3. 3. alexwilliams 08:04 AM 6/29/09

   Going off Jason Seale's comment, it would also mean that they may have also been stocking up on resources to feed them if crops fail, which could also indicate that they had started some sort of agriculture by that time.

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4. 4. shslater 06:00 PM 7/12/09

   The recent discoveryof grain storage facilities in Jordan backs up a theory that cities developed before agriculture published by Jane Jacobs in The Economy of Cities (1969). Ms. Jacobs theory is covered in the first chapter of her book. Her theory is based on studies by British archeologist, James Mellaart of Catal Huyuk in Anatolia.

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5. 5. feedafricaprogramme 08:38 AM 7/27/09

   Since people were eating wildly, i dont think the years mentioned are near to truth. talk about up to 6000 year BC but not further than that. how about the parasites to destroy the stored grain?
   please log on to feedafricaprogramme.com. together we can store food and distribute it during the drought....
   Edward

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