Discuss the proposition that plant domestication in the Near

The origins of plant domestication and agriculture have been debated for decades by not only archaeologist, but ecological theorists, and scientists from a wide range of disciplines. Domestication is the result of the evolution of a symbiosis between man and plant. Plant domestication and the introduction of agriculture are considered to be one of the main characteristics of a civilisation. This is because the excess production of food gives a society the surplus they need to acquire wealth and trade with other societies establishing an economy. This social concentration of converting food surplus into ‘capital’ is outlined as one of Childs main traits of a civilisation. There are considered to be two main opposing views for the proposition of plant domestication. The first is that plant domestication is the result of a widespread and gradual process of increasingly intensive human-plant interactions. The second view is that domestication took place rapidly and perhaps intentionally, in a few geographically restricted locations.

There is strong evidence supporting the locali

There is evidence from many sources that species of plants were domesticated in the Near East in a few geographically restricted locations. Cytogenetic tests have shown that many plants originated from a single region. For example, the wild progenitor of the cultivated pea is chromosomally polymorphic; tests were conducted on six collections of the pea from different locations. The results found that the six peas fall in to two chromosomal races, one from Golan in northern Israel and the other from central Turkey. (Zohary 1989) Manfred Heun and his colleagues have conducted a study on wild and domesticated einkorn wheat in Western Asia, using 1362 samples of living wheats, both wild and domesticated. Their investigation showed that the DNA sequences obtained did permit the distinction to be drawn between wild and domesticated einkorn. The relationships between the analyses give the clear indication that the ancestral variety could be equated with a variety now growing in the Karacadag Mountains of southeast Turkey. (Renfrew & Bahn 2001) During the Late Natufian there is evidence of a climatic deterioration from about 11 000 BP (Willcox 1999) which lead to settlements being abandoned that were too arid. The emigration of people from the farming societies is one of the reasons for, the dispersal of the agricultural way of life and the gradual spread of plant domestication. (Rindos 1980)

This view is not sha

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