We are talking about the development of farming in Ancient Mesopotamia and how farming spread to Europe from there. This is when wild plants became domesticated. In biology this is known as botany. Professor Mark Nathan Cohen has written a book about this subject. This is all very intense and very involved with a lot of artifacts to examine and a lot of different theories to consider. In fact the whole Bible revolves around the story of ancient man going from a food gather to a food producer. AS Adam in the Bible was the first to plow the land.
"Agriculture began independently in different parts of the globe, and included a diverse range of taxa. At least 11 separate regions of the Old and New World were involved as independent
centers of origin.
[11] Some of the earliest known domestications were of animals.
Pigs were domesticated in
Mesopotamia around 13,000 BC.
[12]Sheep were domesticated in
Mesopotamia between 11,000 and 9,000 BC.
[13] Cattle were domesticated from the wild
aurochs in the areas of modern Turkey and Pakistan around 8,500 BC.
[14]
Centres of origin identified by
Nikolai Vavilov in the 1930s. Papua New Guinea (not shaded) was identified more recently.
[15]
It was not until after 9500 bc that the eight so-called
founder crops of agriculture appear: first
emmer and
einkorn wheat, then hulled
barley,
peas,
lentils,
bitter vetch,
chick peas and
flax. These eight crops occur more or less simultaneously on Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (
PPNB) sites in the
Levant, although
wheat was the first to be grown and harvested on a significant scale. At around the same time (9400 bc),
parthenocarpic fig trees were domesticated.
[16][17]
By 7000 bc, sowing and harvesting reached the fertile soil of Mesopotamia, where
Sumerians systematized it and scaled it up. By 8000 bc, farming was entrenched on the banks of the
River Nile. About this time, agriculture was developed independently in the Far East, probably in China, with rice rather than wheat as the primary crop. Maize was domesticated from the wild grass
teosinte in West Mexico by 6700 bc.
[18] The
potato (8,000 BC),
tomato,
[19] pepper(4,000 BC),
squash (8,000 BC) and several varieties of
bean (8,000 BC onwards) were domesticated in the New World.
[20] Agriculture was independently developed on the island of
New Guinea.
[21] In
Greece from c. 11,000 bc lentils,
vetch,
pistachios, and
almonds were cultivated, while
wild oats and
wild barley appear in quantity from c. 7000 bc alongside einkorn wheat, barley, sheep, goats and pigs,
[22][23] while emmer was used on
Cyprus between 9100 and 8600 bc.
[24][25] Archaeological evidence from various sites on the
Iberian peninsula suggest the domestication of plants and animals between 6000 and 4500 bc.
[25] Céide Fields in
Ireland, consisting of extensive tracts of land enclosed by stone walls, date to 3500 bc and are the oldest known field systems in the world.
[26][27] The
horse was domesticated in the
Pontic steppe around 4000 bc.
[28] In
Siberia,
Cannabis was in use in China in Neolithic times and may have been domesticated there; it was in use both as a fibre for ropemaking and as a medicine in Ancient Egypt by about 2350 BC.
[29]" wiki
