Evidence for Early Domestication of Figs

The fig tree, long a symbol of Western culture, may also be one of the earliest domesticated plants in the world. In an article in the June 2, 2006 issue of Science magazine, a research team led by Mordechai Kislev at Bar-Ilan University in Israel report evidence for parthenocarpic figs from six sites in the greater Mediterranean Sea region dated between 11,700 and 10,500 years ago. This evidence of domestication at the Pre Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA 8300-7300 BC) sites of Gilgal, Jericho, Netiv Hagdud and Gesher in the Jordan Valley and Mureybit in the Euphrates Valley, occurs at roughly the same time as rice domestication in Asia, but fully five thousand years earlier than millet or wheat or any other seed plant in the middle east.

To explain why the recovery of this particular fruit almost certainly means they were from domesticated fig trees involves a dip into the biology of this weird and fascinating plant.

Read more about it here:

Fig Trees and Archaeology: The History of the Domestication of Fig Trees

Mordechai E. Kislev, Anat Hartmann, and Ofer Bar-Yosef. 2006. Early domesticated fig in the Jordan Valley. Science 312:1372-1374.

The photograph on the right side of the blog is of a carbonized fig recovered from the Neolithic site of Gilgal I, Israel (copyright 2006 Science magazine) and the landscape is the view of the Jordan River Valley from Gilgal I (copyright 2006 Anat Hartmann).