Re: When DID agriculture start?


"Jim McGinn" <jimmcginn@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1161633128.939516.213810@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Gerrit Hanenburg wrote:
"Paul Crowley" <slkwuoiutiuytciuyik@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"Agriculture probably stretches back hundreds of thousand if not
millions of years. " Dimmy (aka Claudius) 10/22/2006

Let me guess. Mikey objects because he saw in a textbook something
that said otherwise. And the textbook said otherwise based not on
evidence but on lack of evidence.

Guess again. Mikey objects because he saw on the internet something
written by Jimbo. And he knows that anything written by Jimbo is
bull***, based on evidence...

Mudslinging apart -- is anyone (preferably
someone who thinks PA orthodoxy is more-
or-less sound) going to try to deal with the
substantive question?

Did agriculture start around the eastern
end of the Mediterranean about 10 kya?
If so, what name is applied to the plant
cultivation and harvesting, performed by
all those societies throughout the world,
discovered in the past 500 years, who are
known to have been doing it for at least
30 Kyr?

When did hominids begin this 'non-
agricultural' plant cultivation?

It would be wise first to consult a recent textbook on the matter,
such as
http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/book.asp?ref=9780631205661&site=1

And according to this source agriculture has multiple primary origins
around the world, but there is no evidence for crop cultivation on a
detectable scale much earlier than the Holocene.
What tangible evidence, instead of speculation, is there to the
contrary?

Is there any tangible evidence, instead of specuation, that crop
cultivation, of some kind, did not occur earlier?


You could do some basic farming with a digging stick. In fact eating
mellons, swallowing the seeds and taking a dump elsewhere will spread the
plants around. Improving conditions for one kind of plant by fire like with
live oaks in the extreme west of North America isn't the kind of thing you
are likely to prove from fossils even if some group was doing it as early as
He. On the other hand making any claims that some one did something with
nothing to base your claim on is futile. Call it fiction and idle
speculation and be done with it.



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