First evidence of farming in Mideast 23,000 years ago
Credit: © Comugnero Silvana / Fotolia Wild barley . One of the most popular posts on SNfW is entitled, " DNA Research Shows a Mystery Population Invented Agriculture " reporting on research led by Marta Mirazón Lahr of Cambridge University. This research simply states, as the title says, an unknown population of stone age humans developed agriculture, supplanting the hunter gatherer cultures that came before. Sections of the report say ~ "Scientists have developed evidence that supports the idea that our ancestors separated into at least three populations earlier than 36,000 years ago: Western Eurasians, East Asians and a mystery third lineage. "This mystery population may have remained small for a very long time, surviving as refugees in areas such as the Zagros Mountains of Iran and Iraq, for example," said Mirazón Lahr. "We have no idea at the moment where they were for those first 30,000 years, only that they were in the Middle East b...