Now it's official: the fig is the first domesticated plant in history

An earthquake in the world of botany: a group of researchers from the Archaeological Botany Laboratory at Bar-Ilan University discovered right here, near Jericho, the first plant in the world that was deliberately grown by humans - the fig ■ The discovery is published exactly 100 years after Aharon Aaronson discovered the 'mother of wheat' '

Bar-Ilan University

The fossilized figs. Photo: Yoni Reif

Researchers from the Archaeological Botany Laboratory at Bar-Ilan University conducted a comprehensive study on the beginnings of agriculture. That is, about the period when humans moved from occasional gathering of food by hunter and gatherer to planned tillage. The research revealed that burnt figs that are about 11 thousand years old, which were discovered at the prehistoric site of Gilgal I located in the Jordan steppe near Jericho, are the first domesticated plant in the world. Prof. Mordechai Keslo, head of the research team explains: "The wild fig has male trees and female trees. The figs we found were female and did not contain fertile seeds. The reason for this is a mutation process they went through, after which the plant does not need pollination and fertilization and produces fruit independently (parthenocarpy). This process occurs extremely rarely in the wild fig and its effects on it are devastating. Only figs cultivated by humans can survive this mutation process. Hence the figs found were domesticated and developed in the midst of the agricultural revolution."
The innovation in the research was the dating of figs to the beginning of the Neolithic period, and hence agriculture began about 12 thousand years ago - a thousand years earlier than the beginning of the agricultural revolution was estimated until now.
The revolutionary research encompassed many research fields and therefore required cooperation from the Faculty of Life Sciences, the Department of Israel Studies and Archeology at Bar-Ilan University, and Harvard University in the USA.
The researchers owe the results of the research to a historical discovery that is exactly 100 years old: in June 1906, Aharon Aharonson (father of Sara Giborat Nilyi) discovered the 'mother of wheat' - wild wheat - in a rock crevice in the vineyards of the Rosh Pina colony in the Galilee. This discovery spurred many researchers to look for botanical remains in archaeological sites from prehistoric times in the Near East, and to come to the conclusion that the agricultural revolution took place in our region. Thanks to Aaronson, the researchers assessed where they should look for the evidence for this.
The details of the research were published last week, during the Shavuot holiday, in the journal Science, and it is causing quite an earthquake in the world of archaeological botany. "The new findings unequivocally prove that the Land of Israel contributed a significant part to its development and perhaps even to the creation of the beginning of agriculture" concluded Prof. Keslo.
They knew prehistory
For news at the BBC Following the publication in Science
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