Note to users. If you're seeing this message, it means that your browser cannot find this page's style/presentation instructions -- or possibly that you are using a browser that does not support current Web standards. Find out more about why this message is appearing, and what you can do to make your experience of our site the best it can be.
Mordechai E. Kislev,1*Anat Hartmann,2Ofer Bar-Yosef3
It is generally accepted that the fig tree was domesticatedin the Near East some 6500 years ago. Here we report the discoveryof nine carbonized fig fruits and hundreds of drupelets storedin Gilgal I, an early Neolithic village, located in the LowerJordan Valley, which dates to 11,400 to 11,200 years ago. Wesuggest that these edible fruits were gathered from parthenocarpictrees grown from intentionally planted branches. Hence, figtrees could have been the first domesticated plant of the NeolithicRevolution, which preceded cereal domestication by about a thousandyears.
1 Faculty of Life Sciences, Bar-Ilan University, 52900 Ramat-Gan, Israel. 2 Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology Department, Bar-Ilan University, 52900 Ramat-Gan, Israel. 3 Department of Anthropology, Peabody Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: kislev{at}mail.biu.ac.il
