Traces of ancient farmers discovered in southern Uzbekistan

An international team of archaeologists has discovered stone sickles, wild barley and other cereal seeds, as well as various plant remains collected by local hunter-gatherers about 9,200 years ago in the Toda cave in southern Uzbekistan. The findings indicate that cultural traditions predating the emergence of farming were far more widespread than previously expected. This was reported by the press service of the German Institute of Geoanthropology (GEA).

“These practices were characteristic of hunter-gatherers in connection with the emergence of farming in the Near East. In recent years, we have gathered considerable evidence that the domestication of cereals may have occurred accidentally, without deliberate human effort. The fact that such traditions repeatedly emerged in different regions is yet another argument in favor of this theory,” said Robert Spengler, a researcher at the German Institute of Geoanthropology (GEA).

According to scientists, farming is believed to have emerged around 12,000–10,000 years ago in the regions of the Near East, India, and Iran, when representatives of the Natufian culture began transitioning to a sedentary lifestyle. The agricultural traditions they established later spread to other regions and led to the formation of hundreds of settled cultures.

For a long time, archaeologists have been intrigued by the question of how this transition took place and to what extent the first farmers consciously selected crops such as wheat, barley, and rye, while also developing the skills of cultivating, processing, and storing them.

Archaeologists from Uzbekistan, China, and Europe have made a significant step toward answering these questions. During excavations at the Toda cave in the Surkhandarya region of southern Uzbekistan, they uncovered a number of important findings.

Archaeologists discovered numerous plant remains, including apple seeds and pistachio shells, as well as long and narrow stone blades, grinders, and other tools at an Early Neolithic settlement (dating back 9,200 years). Analysis of traces on these tools showed that they were used for cutting wild barley stalks and processing their grains. Interestingly, the same type of barley still grows in southern Uzbekistan today.

According to scholars, similar linear marks have also been found on “sickles” from the earliest farming culture sites in the Levant, as well as on later artifacts from the Obishir-5 archaeological complex in the southern Fergana Valley.

Archaeologists note that the simultaneous emergence of such tools adapted for grain harvesting in several regions of Eurasia suggests that proto-farming traditions arose not only in the Near East but also in other parts of the continent, almost at the same time and spontaneously, wherever favorable climatic conditions existed.