Agricultural origins in the Near East: A model for the 1980s

The traditional model supposed that farming developed rapidly in the Near East during the eighth millennium be. It was preceded by the formation of sedentary settlements in some areas. Fresh evidence from the Levant suggests that in fact agriculture began during the second stage of the Epipalaeolithic (c. 10,000 to 8,500 be), contemporary with the first permanently occupied settlements. There are indications that the pattern of development was similar in Mesopotamia, the Zagros and Anatolia. Thus according to the new model agriculture began in the late Pleistocene, not the early Holocene, when the environment was different from the recent past. There were two further stages of development of the farming way of life after 8,000 be. In the first agriculture supplemented by hunting and gathering spread throughout the region. Then during the sixth millennium be farming and stock‐raising became the sole basis of subsistence everywhere.