Humans feasting on grains for at least 100,000 years
By Katherine Harmon
Grains might have been an important part of human diets much further back in our history than previous research has suggested.
Although cupcakes and crumpets were still a long way off during the Middle Stone Age, new evidence suggests that at least some humans of that time period were eating starchy, cereal-based snacks as early as 105,000 years ago. The findings, gleaned from grass seed residue found on ancient African stone tools, are detailed online Thursday in Science.
Researchers have assumed that humans were foraging for fruits, nuts and roots long before 100,000 years ago, but cereal grains are quite a new addition to the early prehistoric gastronomic picture. "This broadens the timeline for the use of grass seeds by our species," Julio Mercader, an assistant professor at University of Calgary's Department of Archeology and author of the paper, said in a prepared statement.
Plant domestication, most scientists think, made its debut some 10,000 years ago, with grain storage cropping up about 11,000 years ago. An ancient site in Israel yielded a hearty collection of grains, which were dated to about 23,000 years ago, according to a 2004 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper. But such an early appearance of wild cereals in the human diet—as this new paper proposes—would push the assumed date of substantial grass-seed eating back more than 70,000 years.
So just what were these gatherers purportedly gnashing?
Mercader and a team from Mozambique's University of Eduardo Molande had uncovered hundreds of ancient artifacts in a limestone cave near Lake Nissa in Mozambique. Analyzing the surface of 70 of these tools, Mercader found some 2,370 granules of plant starch, which, he reasons, could not have accidentally come from growing plants in such dark reaches of the cave. And the fact that so many of the tools had a coating is evidence of at least some processing to make the seeds more edible.
"The inclusion of cereals in our diet is considered an important step in human evolution because of the technical complexity and the culinary manipulation that are required to turn grains into staples," Mercader said. Indeed, a descendent of the wild sorghum found on the tools still makes up a large portion of modern diets in sub-Saharan products including breads, porridge and even beer.
Other tidbits that these hungry humans appear to have been dining on during that period include the African false banana, pigeon peas, wild oranges, African wine palm and the African potato, the researchers concluded. These finds are "proof of an expanded and sophisticated diet much earlier than we believed," Mercader said. And grain consumption was the first step toward grains' domestication—and, eventually, cupcakes.
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quote:Originally posted by Evergreen: Scientific American - December 17, 2009
Humans feasting on grains for at least 100,000 years
By Katherine Harmon
Mercader and a team from Mozambique's University of Eduardo Molande had uncovered hundreds of ancient artifacts in a limestone cave near Lake Nissa in Mozambique. Analyzing the surface of 70 of these tools, Mercader found some 2,370 granules of plant starch, which, he reasons, could not have accidentally come from growing plants in such dark reaches of the cave. And the fact that so many of the tools had a coating is evidence of at least some processing to make the seeds more edible.
"The inclusion of cereals in our diet is considered an important step in human evolution because of the technical complexity and the culinary manipulation that are required to turn grains into staples," Mercader said. Indeed, a descendent of the wild sorghum found on the tools still makes up a large portion of modern diets in sub-Saharan products including breads, porridge and even beer.
Other tidbits that these hungry humans appear to have been dining on during that period include the African false banana, pigeon peas, wild oranges, African wine palm and the African potato, the researchers concluded. These finds are "proof of an expanded and sophisticated diet much earlier than we believed," Mercader said. And grain consumption was the first step toward grains' domestication—and, eventually, cupcakes.
Evergreen Writes: More evidence that the so-called "Neolithic Revolution" was not really a revolution at all. Instead it was a gradual process originating in Africa and unfolding as humans spread around the circum-mediterranean basin during the early Holocene.
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posted
Another worthy addition to our knowledge base. Fits in right there with other "sudden bursts" of expression of human cognition, usually preferably placed in that region so-called "Near East", that have been challenged by newer finds as well.
Posts: 7516 | From: Somewhere on Earth | Registered: Jan 2008
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quote:Evergreen Writes: More evidence that the so-called "Neolithic Revolution" was not really a revolution at all. Instead it was a gradual process originating in Africa and unfolding as humans spread around the circum-mediterranean basin during the early Holocene.
posted
They're not going to stop finding "things" in MAMA AFRICA that were supposedly brought about by leaving the continent!! This is where we as humans were living atleast 100kya before sucessfully living anywhere outside of Africa.
An addition...
quote: Stone Age Pantry: Archaeologist Unearths Earliest Evidence of Modern Humans Using Wild Grains and Tubers for Food
ScienceDaily — The consumption of wild cereals among prehistoric hunters and gatherers appears to be far more ancient than previously thought, according to a University of Calgary archaeologist who has found the oldest example of extensive reliance on cereal and root staples in the diet of early Homo sapiens more than 100,000 years ago.
Julio Mercader, holder of the Canada Research Chair in Tropical Archaeology in the U of C's Department of Archaeology, recovered dozens of stone tools from a deep cave in Mozambique showing that wild sorghum, the ancestor of the chief cereal consumed today in sub-Saharan Africa for flours, breads, porridges and alcoholic beverages, was in Homo sapiens' pantry along with the African wine palm, the false banana, pigeon peas, wild oranges and the African "potato." This is the earliest direct evidence of humans using pre-domesticated cereals anywhere in the world. Mercader's findings are published in the December 18 issue of the research journal Science.
"This broadens the timeline for the use of grass seeds by our species, and is proof of an expanded and sophisticated diet much earlier than we believed," Mercader said. "This happened during the Middle Stone Age, a time when the collecting of wild grains has conventionally been perceived as an irrelevant activity and not as important as that of roots, fruits and nuts."
In 2007, Mercader and colleagues from Mozambique's University of Eduardo Mondlane excavated a limestone cave near Lake Niassa that was used intermittently by ancient foragers over the course of more than 60,000 years. Deep in this cave, they uncovered dozens of stone tools, animal bones and plant remains indicative of prehistoric dietary practices. The discovery of several thousand starch grains on the excavated plant grinders and scrapers showed that wild sorghum was being brought to the cave and processed systematically.
"It has been hypothesized that starch use represents a critical step in human evolution by improving the quality of the diet in the African savannas and woodlands where the modern human line first evolved. This could be considered one of the earliest examples of this dietary transformation," Mercader said. "The inclusion of cereals in our diet is considered an important step in human evolution because of the technical complexity and the culinary manipulation that are required to turn grains into staples."
Mercader said the evidence is on par with grass seed use by hunter-gatherers in many parts of the world during the closing stages of the last Ice Age, approximately 12,000 years ago. In this case, the trend dates back to the beginnings of the Ice Age, some 90,000 years earlier.
Mercader's work was supported by the Canada Research Chairs program, Canada Foundation for Innovation, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the U of C's Faculty of Social Science and the National Geographic Society.
Posts: 6572 | From: N.Y.C....Capital of the World | Registered: Jun 2008
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quote:Originally posted by Kemit11: The "neolithic Revolution"? DEBUNKED!
Not exactly. Humans eating wild grains is not the same as domesticating grains which is what defines 'neolithic' culture.
But an interesting finding nontheless. Really such a finding is not surprising. Humans as hunter-gatherers were eating all sorts of vegetation long before domestication. Grains should not be an exception.
Posts: 26249 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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posted
Alas, let's take another look at what the article says. It is not 'simply eating grains':
Mercader and a team from Mozambique's University of Eduardo Molande had uncovered hundreds of ancient artifacts in a limestone cave near Lake Nissa in Mozambique. Analyzing the surface of 70 of these tools, Mercader found some 2,370 granules of plant starch, which, he reasons, could not have accidentally come from growing plants in such dark reaches of the cave. And the fact that so many of the tools had a coating is evidence of at least some processing to make the seeds more edible.
"The inclusion of cereals in our diet is considered an important step in human evolution because of the technical complexity and the culinary manipulation that are required to turn grains into staples," Mercader said. Indeed, a descendent of the wild sorghum found on the tools still makes up a large portion of modern diets in sub-Saharan products including breads, porridge and even beer.
This is the crux of the finding. It implicates some sophistry beyond just "gathering" and eating wild grains.
Posts: 7516 | From: Somewhere on Earth | Registered: Jan 2008
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AN older reference too casts doubt on alleged "firsts" from the Middle East in agriculture:
"Excerpt from Africa: A Biography of the Continent, by John Reader, Penguin Books, 1998, pp. 120-173
-------------------------------
"Deliberate control of plant productivity dates back to 70,000 years ago in southern Africa, and the world's earliest known centrally organized food production system was established along the Nile 15,000 years ago, long before the Pharaohs, then swept away by calamitous changes in the river's flow pattern."
"Agriculture is essentially a process of manipulating the distribution and growth of plants so that greater quantities of their edible parts are available for harvesting and consumption. The world's earliest known evidence of natural resources having been manipulated in this way comes from archaeological excavations at the Klasies River cave site in South Africa.."
.. "Harvesting and storage mark the beginning of organized food production: agriculture. But at that stage of its development in the Nile valley organized food production was a high-risk strategy. Output was likely to vary unpredictably, and any increase in population size resulting from a succession of good years would inevitably lead to competition in less favorable times. The burials at Jebel Sahaba (Wadi Halfa) probably record one such episode of violent competition, or warfare, for limited resources of a less than luxuriant Nile valley that was surrounded by an utterly inhospitable desert.”
“The adoption of this broad adaptive strategy provided the large food supply needed by a growing population, but achieving maximum production called for a good deal of planning and the management of labour. This marks the beginning of an organized food-producing system: agriculture.”
“Dating from more than 15,000 years ago, the evidence from the Nile valley is arguably the earliest comprehensive instance of an organized food-producing system known anywhere on Earth. Given time, this pioneering system might have developed into the stupendous civilizations that ruled ancient Egypt for two and a half millennia from about 5,000 years ago. But it could never be. Disaster struck the Nile valley as its population reached a peak, and by 10,000 years ago occupation density had plunged to a level only slightly above that known for the time of the Wadi Kubbaniya site.”
-------------------- Note: I am not an "Egyptologist" as claimed by some still bitter, defeated, trolls creating fake profiles and posts elsewhere. Hapless losers, you still fail. My output of hard data debunking racist nonsense has actually INCREASED since you began.. Posts: 5905 | From: The Hammer | Registered: Aug 2008
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quote:Originally posted by Kemit11: The "neolithic Revolution"? DEBUNKED!
Not exactly. Humans eating wild grains is not the same as domesticating grains which is what defines 'neolithic' culture.
Evergreen Writes:
Not exactly, Djehuti. The genetic changes in plants known as domestication is not the same as a 'neolithic' culture. One relates to the genetic change in the morphology of a species, the other relates to the technology and use of small sickle blades (i.e., neo for "new" and lithic for "stone tool").
Human Population Expanded During Late Stone Age, Genetic Evidence Shows
ScienceDaily (Aug. 4, 2009) — Genetic evidence is revealing that human populations began to expand in size in Africa during the Late Stone Age approximately 40,000 years ago. A research team led by Michael F. Hammer (Arizona Research Laboratory's Division of Biotechnology at the University of Arizona) found that sub-Saharan populations increased in size well before the development of agriculture. This research supports the hypothesis that population growth played a significant role in the evolution of human cultures in the Late Pleistocene.
The team's findings are published in the online peer reviewed journal PLoS ONE on July 29.
Reconstructions of the timing and magnitude of changes in human population size are important for understanding the evolution of our species. There has been a longstanding disagreement whether humans began to increase in number as a result of innovative technologies and/or behaviors formulated by hunter-gatherer groups in the Late Pleistocene, or with the advent of agriculture in the Neolithic. Hammer's research integrates empirical genetics with discoveries in paleontology and archeology to help provide answers to interdisciplinary questions about which kinds of innovations led to the evolutionary success of humankind.
Hammer's UA team, together with their collaborator from the University of California San Francisco's Institute for Human Genetics and Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, surveyed the genetic material of ~184 individuals from seven human populations and used a computational approach to simulate the evolution of genetic lineages over time. The researchers found that both hunter-gathers and food-producing groups best fit models with approximately ten-fold population growth beginning well before the origin of agriculture. For the first time ever, Hammer's team was able to investigate the timing of human population expansion by applying sophisticated inferential statistics to a large multilocus autosomal data set re-sequenced in multiple contemporary sub-Saharan African populations.
The team's finely executed experimental design and use of supercomputing power enabled them to determine that this expansion in population size likely began at the start of the Late Stone Age—a period in prehistory that shows an intensification of archeological sites, an increased abundance of blade-based lithic technologies, and enhanced long-distance exchange. The next step in the project is to gather more data by testing more populations and additional parts of the genome.Posts: 2007 | From: Washington State | Registered: Oct 2006
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Human Population Expanded During Late Stone Age, Genetic Evidence Shows
ScienceDaily (Aug. 4, 2009) — Genetic evidence is revealing that human populations began to expand in size in Africa during the Late Stone Age approximately 40,000 years ago. A research team led by Michael F. Hammer (Arizona Research Laboratory's Division of Biotechnology at the University of Arizona) found that sub-Saharan populations increased in size well before the development of agriculture. This research supports the hypothesis that population growth played a significant role in the evolution of human cultures in the Late Pleistocene.
The team's findings are published in the online peer reviewed journal PLoS ONE on July 29.
Reconstructions of the timing and magnitude of changes in human population size are important for understanding the evolution of our species. There has been a longstanding disagreement whether humans began to increase in number as a result of innovative technologies and/or behaviors formulated by hunter-gatherer groups in the Late Pleistocene, or with the advent of agriculture in the Neolithic. Hammer's research integrates empirical genetics with discoveries in paleontology and archeology to help provide answers to interdisciplinary questions about which kinds of innovations led to the evolutionary success of humankind.
Hammer's UA team, together with their collaborator from the University of California San Francisco's Institute for Human Genetics and Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, surveyed the genetic material of ~184 individuals from seven human populations and used a computational approach to simulate the evolution of genetic lineages over time. The researchers found that both hunter-gathers and food-producing groups best fit models with approximately ten-fold population growth beginning well before the origin of agriculture. For the first time ever, Hammer's team was able to investigate the timing of human population expansion by applying sophisticated inferential statistics to a large multilocus autosomal data set re-sequenced in multiple contemporary sub-Saharan African populations.
The team's finely executed experimental design and use of supercomputing power enabled them to determine that this expansion in population size likely began at the start of the Late Stone Age—a period in prehistory that shows an intensification of archeological sites, an increased abundance of blade-based lithic technologies, and enhanced long-distance exchange. The next step in the project is to gather more data by testing more populations and additional parts of the genome.
The importance of this paper is in the fact that while populations were growing in Africa, European and SW Asian populations were small and hence more evidence for Africa as a "feeder" populations during the early Holocene.
quote:Originally posted by Evergreen: [QUOTE]Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2008 Jan 8;105(1):48-53. Epub 2008 Jan 2.
Evidence for declines in human population densities during the early Upper Paleolithic in western Europe. Morin E.
Department of Anthropology, Trent University, Peterborough, ON, Canada.
In western Europe, the Middle to Upper Paleolithic (M/UP) transition, dated between approximately 35,000 and approximately 40,000 radiocarbon years, corresponded to a period of major human biological and cultural changes. However, information on human population densities is scarce for that period. New faunal data from the high-resolution record of Saint-Césaire, France, indicate an episode of significant climatic deterioration during the early Upper Paleolithic (EUP), which also was associated with a reduction in mammalian species diversity. High correlations between ethnographic data and mammalian species diversity suggest that this shift decreased human population densities. Reliance on reindeer (Rangifer tarandus), a highly fluctuating resource, would also have promoted declines in human population densities. These data suggest that the EUP represented for humans a period of significant niche contraction in western Europe. In this context, the possibility that a modern human expansion occurred in this region seems low. Instead, it is suggested that population bottlenecks, genetic drift, and gene flow prevailed over human population replacement as mechanisms of evolution in humans during the EUP.
quote:Originally posted by Evergreen: [QUOTE]
First Farmers The Origins of Agricultural Socities
By Peter Bellwood
The Hunter-Gatherer Background in the Levant, 19,000 to 9,500 BC
"At this time, available data suggest a very low population density for SouthWest Asia..."
quote:Originally posted by Evergreen: [QUOTE]
A Biography of the Continent Africa
By John Reader
Regarding Southern Egypt and Northern Sudan:
"Throught this period the majority of sites had covered an area of about 400 m (the home base for a group of perhaps forty people), but the size of the largest rose from 800 m 18,000 years ago to more than 10,000 m 6,000 years later - large enough to constitute a village. These increases in the size and number of sites clearly denote an increase in overall population size, and since the area of the Nile "oasis" would have varied little throughout the period in question, the growing numbers of people could only have been fed by increased food production."
quote:Originally posted by Evergreen: [QUOTE]
From wiki:
Battaglia et al. (2008) propose that the point of origin of E-M78 (as opposed to later dispersals from Egypt) may have been in a refugium which "existed on the border of present-day Sudan and Egypt, near Lake Nubia, until the onset of a humid phase around 8500 BC. The northward-moving rainfall belts during this period could have also spurred a rapid migration of Mesolithic foragers northwards in Africa, the Levant and ultimately onwards to Asia Minor and Europe, where they each eventually differentiated into their regionally distinctive branches".
Posts: 2007 | From: Washington State | Registered: Oct 2006
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quote: AN older reference too casts doubt on alleged "firsts" from the Middle East in agriculture:
"Excerpt from Africa: A Biography of the Continent, by John Reader, Penguin Books, 1998, pp. 120-173
-------------------------------
"Deliberate control of plant productivity dates back to 70,000 years ago in southern Africa, and the world's earliest known centrally organized food production system was established along the Nile 15,000 years ago, long before the Pharaohs, then swept away by calamitous changes in the river's flow pattern."
"Agriculture is essentially a process of manipulating the distribution and growth of plants so that greater quantities of their edible parts are available for harvesting and consumption. The world's earliest known evidence of natural resources having been manipulated in this way comes from archaeological excavations at the Klasies River cave site in South Africa.."
.. "Harvesting and storage mark the beginning of organized food production: agriculture. But at that stage of its development in the Nile valley organized food production was a high-risk strategy. Output was likely to vary unpredictably, and any increase in population size resulting from a succession of good years would inevitably lead to competition in less favorable times. The burials at Jebel Sahaba (Wadi Halfa) probably record one such episode of violent competition, or warfare, for limited resources of a less than luxuriant Nile valley that was surrounded by an utterly inhospitable desert.”
“The adoption of this broad adaptive strategy provided the large food supply needed by a growing population, but achieving maximum production called for a good deal of planning and the management of labour. This marks the beginning of an organized food-producing system: agriculture.”
“Dating from more than 15,000 years ago, the evidence from the Nile valley is arguably the earliest comprehensive instance of an organized food-producing system known anywhere on Earth. Given time, this pioneering system might have developed into the stupendous civilizations that ruled ancient Egypt for two and a half millennia from about 5,000 years ago. But it could never be. Disaster struck the Nile valley as its population reached a peak, and by 10,000 years ago occupation density had plunged to a level only slightly above that known for the time of the Wadi Kubbaniya site.”
My training is primarily in Fine Arts, but I did take classes in Archaeology and Anthropology. Even back in the early 80's mention was made of possible early agriculture in Africa. We were instructed that there HAD to have been errors in dating methods because there was a return to hunting and gathering at later dates before the "official" arrival of agriculture via the Levant. Mention was made of fluctuating climate during this time but any speculation that this could be the explaination as to why there was the return to hunting and gathering was tersely rejected.
Posts: 84 | From: Oakland, Caifornia | Registered: Sep 2009
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quote:Originally posted by The Explorer: Alas, let's take another look at what the article says. It is not 'simply eating grains':
Mercader and a team from Mozambique's University of Eduardo Molande had uncovered hundreds of ancient artifacts in a limestone cave near Lake Nissa in Mozambique. Analyzing the surface of 70 of these tools, Mercader found some 2,370 granules of plant starch, which, he reasons, could not have accidentally come from growing plants in such dark reaches of the cave. And the fact that so many of the tools had a coating is evidence of at least some processing to make the seeds more edible.
"The inclusion of cereals in our diet is considered an important step in human evolution because of the technical complexity and the culinary manipulation that are required to turn grains into staples," Mercader said. Indeed, a descendent of the wild sorghum found on the tools still makes up a large portion of modern diets in sub-Saharan products including breads, porridge and even beer.
This is the crux of the finding. It implicates some sophistry beyond just "gathering" and eating wild grains.
I understand that these grains were processed before eating, but are you saying this implies the actual domestication of the plants themselves?
quote:Originally posted by Evergreen: Not exactly, Djehuti. The genetic changes in plants known as domestication is not the same as a 'neolithic' culture. One relates to the genetic change in the morphology of a species, the other relates to the technology and use of small sickle blades (i.e., neo for "new" and lithic for "stone tool").
You're right. The term neolithic or any lithic is more appropriately used to describe the actual stone tool technology however the use of 'neolithic' has usually expanded to mean plant or animal domestication. But if neolithic in this case means new stone technology for the processing of food then the 'neolithic' period is far older than we thought it was and dates back to our earliest ancestors in Africa.
Posts: 26249 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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Alas, let's take another look at what the article says. It is not 'simply eating grains':
Mercader and a team from Mozambique's University of Eduardo Molande had uncovered hundreds of ancient artifacts in a limestone cave near Lake Nissa in Mozambique. Analyzing the surface of 70 of these tools, Mercader found some 2,370 granules of plant starch, which, he reasons, could not have accidentally come from growing plants in such dark reaches of the cave. And the fact that so many of the tools had a coating is evidence of at least some processing to make the seeds more edible.
"The inclusion of cereals in our diet is considered an important step in human evolution because of the technical complexity and the culinary manipulation that are required to turn grains into staples," Mercader said. Indeed, a descendent of the wild sorghum found on the tools still makes up a large portion of modern diets in sub-Saharan products including breads, porridge and even beer.
This is the crux of the finding. It implicates some sophistry beyond just "gathering" and eating wild grains.
I understand that these grains were processed before eating, but are you saying this implies the actual domestication of the plants themselves?
I'm saying what I said; what was that? But that aside, I cannot say for sure if wild grains were "domesticated", since the prospect of that was not elaborated in the article. However, the article's point is that the consumption of wild grains is not mere consumption. Certain steps were taken to change the wild grains into more edible formats. Could *processed* grains being introduced as part of staple food, have led to wild grains being intentionally grown for such purpose? It's possible. If our subjects here were bright enough to process wild grain into more edible form, should they not be just as capable of intentionally growing them for that purpose? My point is, the focal point of the article has the danger of being lost, if the findings is simply interpreted as hunter-gatherers eating wild grains, and that this is supposed to not be a big deal of a finding. The findings is yet another blow at the romanticizing of placing purported crucial turning points of "human cognition developments" in the so-called "Near East".
As the article notes:
"The inclusion of cereals in our diet is considered an important step in human evolution because of the technical complexity and the culinary manipulation that are required to turn grains into staples," Mercader said.
And, it cannot be separated from the so-called Neolithic farming economy of the early Holocene. Case in point:
grain consumption was the first step toward grains' domestication—and, eventually, cupcakes.Posts: 7516 | From: Somewhere on Earth | Registered: Jan 2008
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quote: I understand that these grains were processed before eating, but are you saying this implies the actual domestication of the plants themselves?
I'm saying what I said; what was that? But that aside, I cannot say for sure if wild grains were "domesticated", since the prospect of that was not elaborated in the article. However, the article's point is that the consumption of wild grains is not mere consumption. Certain steps were taken to change the wild grains into more edible formats. Could *processed* grains being introduced as part of staple food, have led to wild grains being intentionally grown for such purpose? It's possible. If our subjects here were bright enough to process wild grain into more edible form, should they not be just as capable of intentionally growing them for that purpose? My point is, the focal point of the article has the danger of being lost, if the findings is simply interpreted as hunter-gatherers eating wild grains, and that this is supposed to not be a big deal of a finding. The findings is yet another blow at the romanticizing of placing purported crucial turning points of "human cognition developments" in the so-called "Near East".
The earliest domestication of plants (not excluding animals) started out with plants exibiting genetic changes that better suited a symbiotic relationship with humans. The following is a link to one of my favorite authors who explores how this dynamic continues even today.
quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: [QUOTE]The term neolithic or any lithic is more appropriately used to describe the actual stone tool technology however the use of 'neolithic' has usually expanded to mean plant or animal domestication. But if neolithic in this case means new stone technology for the processing of food then the 'neolithic' period is far older than we thought it was and dates back to our earliest ancestors in Africa.
Evergreen Writes: More importantly settled societies (i.e., "civilization") is not the result of an isolated "neolithic revolution" that occured in the so-called Near East, but instead is the result of techological innovations that have been evolving inside of Africa since the Late Stone Age. These innovations blossomed into agricultural societies in the so-called Near East when Africans spread out of Africa during the early Holocene.
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