Grinding grain before farming
Wild cereals are harvested, ground and baked at an Israeli lakeside camp 23,000 years ago.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 1 thousand years
- Known to
- ± 1 thousand years
- Era
- Late Pleistocene, Quaternary
Ohalo II on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, preserved by waterlogging, contains brush hut floors, a grinding stone with wild barley and wheat starch on its surface, and a possible oven — 12,000 years before agriculture. Over 140 plant species were being exploited, including small-seeded grasses that take considerable processing for little return. Broad-spectrum foraging of this kind is the practice out of which cultivation eventually grows.