World's earliest traces of agriculture were recently discovered in a cave

Archaeologists working in Toda Cave in southern Uzbekistan report that people were cutting wild barley with stone blades and sickles about 9,200 years ago. The find expands where the first barley grain harvesting happened, and it centers on a cave community far from the Fertile Crescent.

The team also recovered pistachio shells and apple seeds from the cave’s oldest layers. Together, the plant remains and worn blades point to regular gathering of grains, nuts, and fruits in a wetter valley than today.

Harvesting barley long ago

Excavations exposed tiny blades, a grinding stone, pitted hammers, and carbonized plant bits in layers dated to about 9,200 to 8,000 calendar years ago. The barley grains match wild forms, and the tools carry the glossy edge that repeatedly cuts leaves on stone.

The work was led by Xinying Zhou, a paleoarchaeologist at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) in Beijing. Her research focuses on early plant use and the long, stepwise path toward farming.

A key time marker in archaeology is cal BP, calendar years before present, counts from 1950. Radiocarbon tests from multiple layers at the site support the early Holocene dates.

Researchers argue that early foragers were processing these grains and nuts as part of a flexible diet. The cave sits in foothills that likely held shrubby woodlands and seasonal grasslands when people lived there.

Barley harvesting tools and gear

Stone blades show edge wear consistent with cutting silica rich grasses, the kind of sheen seen on early harvesting gear. Similar patterns appear at other sites that predate farming by many millennia.

Evidence from other sites, such as Ohalo II in Israel, also shows that people were already using flint inserts as part of composite tools for harvesting wild cereals.

At Toda, many blades are small microliths, small shaped blades used in composite tools. Several show continuous edge damage, a hallmark of repetitive slicing through tough stems.

The team also found a lone grinding stone and pitted anvils that fit with cracking nuts or crushing seeds. Those artifacts, together with the plant remains, frame a clear picture of deliberate plant processing.

Rethinking the first farmers

Many scholars now see agriculture as a slow coevolution between people and plants, not a single invention. The Toda Cave evidence adds a far northern foothill community to that slow process in Eurasia.

Findings from the Shubayqa 1 site in Jordan also suggest that people were preparing and eating bread-like foods about 4,000 years before the rise of agriculture.

Together, data points like Ohalo II, Shubayqa, and Toda show that seed foraging, grinding, and even baking were common long before crop fields. Harvesting wild barley stands could create subtle selection that later helped domestication along.

Domesticated barley reached this region later, likely introduced from the Iranian Plateau around 8,000 years ago. That timing fits a picture where harvesting came first and true cultivation followed.

Apples and pistachios on the menu

The cave yields the earliest signs in Central Asia of people using pistachios and a wild apple relative. Those finds broaden the story beyond grasses to wooded foods that thrive in foothill ecosystems nearby.

Genetic work shows that Malus sieversii, a Central Asian wild apple, contributed most to today’s orchard apples. Large scale genomics points to origins in the Tian Shan with later mixing from European wild apples.

Finding apple relatives in the cave layers ties human foragers to that broader natural larder. It also hints at seasonal rounds that tracked ripening times from valley floors to upland slopes.

Pistachio shells appear in many levels, and wood charcoal is dominated by pistachio and other shrubby trees. These signals match a local woodland, and they support a diet where nuts mattered.

Why barley harvesting matters

Toda Cave helps shift the geography of early plant use. It shows cereal foraging far beyond the classic Fertile Crescent belt, in the mountains that feed the Amu Darya river.

It also nudges how we explain domestication. Behaviors like repeated harvesting and carrying seeds home can raise selection pressure even without conscious planting over time.

For context, people lived as hunter gatherers for most of human history, only turning to settled farming late in time. A clear research places that shift around 12,000 years ago.

By placing stone sickles and wild barley in one early cave, the new work clarifies a step on that path. It connects a small valley in Uzbekistan to a wider Eurasian story of patient change.

How the ages were nailed down

The timeline rests on dozens of radiocarbon dates taken from charcoal and seeds across several trenches. Those dates line up neatly with the tool layers, which points to a long occupation.

Scientists also studied palynology, pollen study that reconstructs past vegetation, to check the valley’s old plant cover. The sediments show shrubs and grasses that fit a wetter, seasonal landscape.

Charcoal fragments came mainly from short, shrubby trees such as pistachio, which matches the nutshell record. Together, these proxies build a consistent picture of the cave’s setting and resource use.

Future digs will look for more barley parts to test whether people were tending wild stands. A toughened rachis, seed stem that breaks easily in wild cereals, is one telltale domestication trait.

Researchers will also compare edge wear in larger tool sets to estimate how widespread sickle harvesting was. Those checks could reveal when local habits tipped from foraging to cultivation.

The study is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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