There is evidence of the integration of cereals and agriculture being as early as 40,000 BCE (before common era). This is through scriptural evidence in the Indian scripts of Sun sciences and agricultural patterns "Sūrya Siddhanta".
So the dates of 12000 BCE are hardly ancient from that perspective.
Also, I encourage scientific articles to refrain from using the religious term BC (before Christ), instead use BCE as above. Using BC indicates narrow mindedness and a distinct parochial narrative that could have swayed the article, when we know it may not have.
"n 6 March 2006 Der Spiegel reported that the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne[4] had discovered that the genetically common ancestor of 68 contemporary types of cereal still grows as a wild plant on the slopes of Mount Karaca (Karacadag).[5] The results strongly suggest that slopes of Karaca Dağ provided the site for the first domestication of einkorn wheat approximately 9,000 years ago."
The greatest mystery of the development of agriculture and organized building is why it happened so late. It appears to have begun spontaneously at distant, disconnected centers (South America and Turkey/Palestine) almost as soon as the sea level rose, suggesting it only needed the right conditions to flower.
Earlier ice ages made life in higher latitudes difficult, but the tropics were never cold. We find no hint that the developments we know of were products of earlier development--aside from the decidedly mature stone carving at Göbekli Tepe, which has no known antecedents, although they must exist somewhere.
The unique event was the Younger Dryas cold spell, with its very sharp rises in ocean level at onset and for long after. How that provoked development is a matter of conjecture, but we know that many people must have been displaced by rising water, which would have forced openness to other changes as a matter of survival.
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 82.7 ms ] threadSo the dates of 12000 BCE are hardly ancient from that perspective.
Also, I encourage scientific articles to refrain from using the religious term BC (before Christ), instead use BCE as above. Using BC indicates narrow mindedness and a distinct parochial narrative that could have swayed the article, when we know it may not have.
"n 6 March 2006 Der Spiegel reported that the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne[4] had discovered that the genetically common ancestor of 68 contemporary types of cereal still grows as a wild plant on the slopes of Mount Karaca (Karacadag).[5] The results strongly suggest that slopes of Karaca Dağ provided the site for the first domestication of einkorn wheat approximately 9,000 years ago."
Earlier ice ages made life in higher latitudes difficult, but the tropics were never cold. We find no hint that the developments we know of were products of earlier development--aside from the decidedly mature stone carving at Göbekli Tepe, which has no known antecedents, although they must exist somewhere.
The unique event was the Younger Dryas cold spell, with its very sharp rises in ocean level at onset and for long after. How that provoked development is a matter of conjecture, but we know that many people must have been displaced by rising water, which would have forced openness to other changes as a matter of survival.