A scientific study conducted in Spain revealed that farmers in Western Europe in the Neolithic era used modern agricultural methods that were almost identical to those used today, although they differed from the agricultural methods that were prevalent in other regions of the ancient world such as the Middle East. The research team from the University of Barcelona in Spain concluded that the first farmers about seven thousand years ago in Western Europe used advanced agricultural methods in terms of the use of fertilizers and diversification of crops in line with the nature of the soil.
The study, published in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, built a conceptual model of the agricultural environment thousands of years ago, the methods of harvesting, and the nature of crops and agriculture that prevailed at that time in the region of Western Europe known as “La Draga” and which includes the Spanish lands at the present time. It also included data on 16 agricultural sites that witnessed the emergence of agricultural activity in that region of the world.
The results confirmed that agriculture, since its inception in the Iberian Peninsula, has come a long way in terms of grain cultivation techniques, and later spread to the rest of Europe, after achieving a major leap compared to the Fertile Crescent region in the Middle East, which is considered the cradle of the agricultural revolution in the Neolithic Age.
Since humans learned about agriculture more than 12 thousand years ago in the Fertile Crescent, the nature of the relationship between humans and the environment in which they live has changed, and the form of social and economic relations in early human societies has also changed.
The research team carried out excavations and constructed a paleoenvironmental model based on plant fossil samples in order to identify the conditions that prevailed in the villages of the Ladraja region when agriculture first emerged. The study focused on an agricultural village on the eastern shores of Lake Banyoles, one of the oldest settlements of agricultural and livestock farming in the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula between 5200 and 4800 BC. It also included areas of southern France in order to give the research a regional dimension to include cereal farming activities in those areas in general.
“Agriculture began on undeveloped land, but early farmers were good at choosing the right soil for farming,” says Josep Lluís Araus, a biologist at the University of Barcelona and a member of Spain’s CERCA Agricultural Research Center. “The crops that early farmers chose at the beginning were not different from the approach that their descendants followed in the same areas thousands of years later.”
In his study, Arwas relied on agricultural excavation samples found by several European universities and research bodies in order to learn about the nature of agricultural activity and the characteristics of crops in that era.
The main source of information in those historical periods was the remains of plant seeds and fruits found in the archaeological sites that were excavated. These samples were subjected to radioactive isotope examinations to explore the characteristics of agricultural practices in the distant past, according to Ferran Antolin from the German Paleontological Institute.
In statements to the website “Science Daily”, which specializes in scientific research, Antolin stated that the main crops in the La Draga region were durum wheat and poppy, and barley appeared in limited areas in addition to corn, adding that the areas allocated to growing grains in general remained unchanged during the various stages of agricultural development in that era.
Although animal domestication was not the focus of the study, there were several indications that the grain fields in these areas had been subject to animal husbandry, which explains how early farmers relied on animal waste as a means of fertilizing the land, as shown by radioisotope examinations of grain seeds recovered during archaeological excavations, says researcher Juan Pedro Ferrio of the Spanish National Research Council.
The study showed that the natural environment on the shores of Lake Banyoles was conducive to agriculture when humans settled in the area in the Neolithic era. Studies of ancient seeds revealed that water was more abundant in the area than it is now, and that the vegetables grown at that time were different from those grown today, requiring a more humid climate than now. There was an abundance of oak, laurel and tree cover on the river banks.
In his statements to the website “Science Daily”, researcher Josep Araus confirmed that scientific evidence indicates that “the environment at that time was more humid than it is now, and therefore suitable for the development of agricultural activity” as was the case in other areas in the western Mediterranean, explaining that agricultural activity would not have developed in those areas at the same pace if there were negative environmental conditions that conflicted with planting and harvesting activities.
Although our knowledge of the nature of agricultural activity during the early stages of the Neolithic period is still limited and incomplete, especially in prehistoric human settlements due to the scarcity of fossils and samples available for scientific study, advanced research techniques and methods such as ecophysiology and isotope examination will pave the way in the future to shed more light on the nature of agricultural activity at the dawn of history.
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