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Grex Science Item 26: Genetic evidence points to Turkey as birthplace of agriculture [linked]
Entered by russ on Sun Nov 16 20:36:53 UTC 1997:

By Robert Lee Hotz
        Los Angeles Times
(Reproduced without permission.  Edits marked with [braces].)
 
If there was anything like a garden of Eden, it may well have been a
prehistoric vegetable patch in a narrow swatch of Turkish hills where,
new scientific evidence suggests, the first farmers turned wild weeds
into crops.
 
Scientists say they had used DNA fingerprinting to trace the origin of
a "founder crop" called einkorn wheat to one corner of the ancient
Fertile Crescent, which many experts consider the site of the single
most important event in history - the invention of agriculture 10,000
years ago.
 
The new genetic analysis also suggests it may have taken less than 100
years to transform the wild wheat into a useful cereal crop, setting
in motion suprisingly quickly the forces that would transform a
primitive human society of hunters and gatherers into the centralized
technological civilization that dominates so much of the world today.
 
[...] "Out of the eight founder crops in the Fertile Crescent, this is
the third to be nailed down... and all three to be nailed down are in
southeastern Turkey," said [UCLA] physiologist Jared Diamond [...].
 
The researchers reported that the wheat was first cultivated near the
Karacadag Mountains in southeastern Turkey, where chickpeas and bitter
vetch also originated.  Bread wheat - the most valuable single crop in
the world - grapes and olives were domesticated nearby, as were sheep,
pigs, goats and cattle.
 
[...]
                        Untainted wheat
 
In their search for the precise origins of agriculture, the
researchers selected einkorn wheat, in part, because the hulled grain
fell out of favor with farmers thousands of years ago at the end of
the Bronze Age and, therefore, has remained largely untouched by
modern plant breeders.
 
"When you look at todays' modern wheat, it has been crossed with just
about everything, and then it is difficult to trace it back to its
wild source," explained [Manfred Heun, University of Norway].  "Here
we had a species untouched by modern genetics and breeding, and the
while (where it originated) is still the wild, untouched."
 
It became apparent that it took an alteration in just one or two genes
to transform the ancient wild wheat into a useful crop, Heun said.  And
that was enough to start the first regular cultivation of plants.

3 responses total.

#1 of 3 by russ on Sun Nov 16 20:37:22 1997:

[This is item #95 in Fall Agora and #26 in Science.]

What fascinates me about this particular news item is that one
of the newest scientific tests, which is more often in the news
for solving criminal whodunnits, is unlocking one of the biggest
mysteries of the history of mankind.

#2 of 3 by rcurl on Mon Nov 17 02:13:40 1997:

DNA sequencing (fingerprinting) is unlocking an emormous number of puzzles
in evolution - solving whodunnits is a minor application (but, as you say,
"most often in the news").

#3 of 3 by srw on Wed Nov 26 21:23:28 1997:

Yes, this is avery interesting application of the thechnology, and I expect
we'll see a lot more of this kind of things. It's fascinating.

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