The origins of our modern wheat, according to genetics and archaeological studies, are found in the Karacadag mountain region of what is today southeastern Turkey–wheat makes up two of the classic eight founder crops of the origins of agriculture.
Taking root around 12,000 years ago, agriculture triggered such a change in society and the way in which people lived that its development has been dubbed the Neolithic Revolution.
Goats (Capra hircus) were among the first domesticated animals, adapted from the wild bezoar ibex Capra aegargus in western Asia.
The Qaraoun culture is a culture of the Lebanese Stone Age around Qaraoun in the Beqaa Valley.
Archaeological excavations starting in the 1840s CE have revealed human settlements dating to 10,000 BCE in Mesopotamia that indicate that the fertile conditions of the land between two rivers allowed an ancient hunter-gatherer people to settle in the land, domesticate animals, and turn their attention to agriculture.
The beginning of this process in different regions has been dated from 10,000 to 8,000 BCE in the Fertile Crescent and perhaps 8000 BCE in the Kuk Early Agricultural Site of Melanesia.
In 1938 archaeologist Luther Cressman (from the University of Oregon) excavated at Fort Rock Cave in central Oregon. Cressman found dozens of sandals below a layer of volcanic ash.
The earliest archaeological evidence suggests that cultures existed in Burma as early as 11,000 BCE. The Anyathian, Burma’s Stone Age, existed at a time thought to parallel the lower and middle Paleolithic in Europe.
Tribes of a few hundred or less began to emerge 13,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent with harvests of abundant wild cereals.
The history of the domesticated sheep goes back to between 11000 and 9000 BC, and the domestication of the wild mouflon in ancient Mesopotamia.
