Domestication and early agriculture in the Mediterranean Basin: Origins, diffusion, and impact

TLDR

Recent advances have dramatically expanded our understanding of early Mediterranean agriculture, revealing that domestication occurred in diverse regions of the Fertile Crescent with multiple domestic lineages per species. These insights stem from novel methods for documenting plant and animal domestication, coupled with evidence that indigenous peoples adopted domesticates and locally domesticated endemic species. The earliest domestication events date to the 12th millennium cal B.P., with evidence of herd management and crop cultivation a millennium earlier than morphological changes, and the spread of agriculture across the Mediterranean was driven by multiple waves of seafaring colonists, leading to the replacement of endemic island faunas and shaping today’s biodiverse yet threatened landscapes.

Abstract

The past decade has witnessed a quantum leap in our understanding of the origins, diffusion, and impact of early agriculture in the Mediterranean Basin. In large measure these advances are attributable to new methods for documenting domestication in plants and animals. The initial steps toward plant and animal domestication in the Eastern Mediterranean can now be pushed back to the 12th millennium cal B.P. Evidence for herd management and crop cultivation appears at least 1,000 years earlier than the morphological changes traditionally used to document domestication. Different species seem to have been domesticated in different parts of the Fertile Crescent, with genetic analyses detecting multiple domestic lineages for each species. Recent evidence suggests that the expansion of domesticates and agricultural economies across the Mediterranean was accomplished by several waves of seafaring colonists who established coastal farming enclaves around the Mediterranean Basin. This process also involved the adoption of domesticates and domestic technologies by indigenous populations and the local domestication of some endemic species. Human environmental impacts are seen in the complete replacement of endemic island faunas by imported mainland fauna and in today's anthropogenic, but threatened, Mediterranean landscapes where sustainable agricultural practices have helped maintain high biodiversity since the Neolithic.