Crop cultivation may have developed 11,000 years earlier than previously thought, according to a new study by Israeli archaeologists published in the journal PLOS ONE. The researchers believe they have discovered evidence of the earliest known farming attempts by humans in Ohalo II, a 23,000-year-old hunter-gatherers’ sedentary camp on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, Israel. Until now, scientists believed that the origins of farming dated back around 12,000 years ago to Iraq, the Levant, parts of Turkey and Iran, an area called the Cradle of Civilisation. “While full-scale agriculture did not develop until much later, our study shows that trial cultivation began far earlier than previously believed, and gives us reason to rethink our ancestors’ capabilities,” said Prof. Marcelo Sternberg of the Department of Molecular Biology and Ecology of Plants at Tel Aviv University, one of the authors of the study. “Those early ancestors were more clever and more skilled than we knew.” The researchers examined more than 150,000 specimens of plant remains retrieved from the Ohala II site. The well preserved hunter-gatherer settlement was discovered in 1989 when the water level in the sea of Galilee dropped due to drought and excessive water extraction. The researchers determined that early humans there had gathered over 140 species of plants. These included 13 known weeds mixed with edible cereals, such as wild emmer, wild barley, and wild oats. Since weeds thrive in cultivated fields and disturbed soils, a significant presence of weeds species is widely considered an indicator of systematic cultivation, according to the study. The researchers also found a grinding slab, a stone tool used to extract cereal starch granules, as well as a distribution of seeds around this tool, reflecting that the cereal grains were processed for consumption. (ab)