Rewriting Biblical history? Agriculture might be 5,000 years older than believed.

A new find suggests farmers in Bible lands built channels for irrigation long before historians thought they did, allowing for cultivated vineyards, olives, wheat and barley.

|
Douglas Main / LiveScience.com
By using walls to channelize and collect floodwaters, ancient farmers made the most of scant rainfall to grow crops in the desert. These techniques are still used today, like in this field outside the old city of Avdat, Israel.

For thousands of years, different groups of people have lived in the Negev desert, building stone walls and cities that survive to this day. But how did they make their living?

The current thinking is that these desert denizens didn't practice agriculture before approximately the first century, surviving instead by raising animals, said Hendrik Bruins, a landscape archaeologist at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

But new research suggests people in this area, the Negev highlands, practiced agriculture as long ago as 5000 B.C., Bruins told LiveScience. If true, the finding could change historians' views of the area's inhabitants, who lived in the region in biblical times and even before, he added.

A great surprise

Bruins' findings come from radiocarbon dating of bones and organic materials in various soil layers in an ancient field in southern Israel. He measured the ratio of carbon isotopes (atoms of the same element with a different number of neutrons), which changes as the radioactive carbon-14 isotope breaks down over time, while the stable carbon-12 does not. Within the soil, he found evidence of past cultivation, including animal manure and charred organic material (likely burnt kitchen scraps), both of which have been used as fertilizer around the world for millennia, he said. (Carbon dating has been used to date famous objects, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls). 

"I found a wonderful radiocarbon sequence of ages," Bruins said. "And it was for me a great surprise."

He found three distinct layers in the earth indicating that the field had been cultivated, corresponding to three different periods of activity, with long gaps in between. The first one dated from 5000 B.C. to 4500 B.C., followed by another from 1600 B.C. to 950 B.C. and a final layer dating from A.D. 650 to A.D. 950.

The first group of people that farmed here has no current known name, he said, but developed flint tools that have been found throughout the region.

The Exodus

The second period of agriculture, from 1600 B.C. to 950 B.C., corresponds to the time in which the Jews made their way from Egypt to modern-day Israel, according to Exodus and other books of the Bible, Bruins said.

The site where Bruins conducted his research, south of Beersheba, is likely to the south and east of where historians place the Israelites during this time period, he said. But it could possibly have been home to tribes associated with the Amalekites, a group living in the area at the time that was hostile to the Israelites, Bruins said.

The third layer corresponds to the late Byzantine and early Islamic period, when people were known to practice agriculture in this area, he added.

Bruins is currently submitting his research to a peer-reviewed scientific journal; it hasn't yet been published.

Graeme Barker, a researcher at the University of Cambridge, said that without having a peer-reviewed paper, it's difficult to tell how important the finding may be. However, if the research does indeed prove that agriculture has been practiced in the area since 5000 B.C., that finding would be "great, and important."

A lot of archaeological work has been conducted in the area, but analysis of stones and pottery has limitations when it comes to agriculture, Bruins said. "There is widespread evidence of ancient floodwater farming in the southern Levant in the form of drystone walls across and along wadis (valleys), but whilst there is an enormous literature about the likely periods of the past to which they belong, most of this is speculative… and in principle, examples of floodwater farming structures could date anywhere in time from the Neolithic to the 20th century," Barker wrote in an email to LiveScience.

These desert peoples used walls and ditches to collect rainwater during the area's infrequent rainfalls. Later inhabitants of the area, known as the Nabataeans, are known for their skill at collecting and conserving rainwater, which allowed them to establish and run a thriving trade route through the area before the arrival of the Romans, who eventually displaced the Nabataeans, Bruins said.

Ancient farms, like those in the region today, likely cultivated vineyards, olives, wheat and barley, he said.

Editor's Note: This story was generated during a trip paid for by American Associates, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

Email Douglas Main or follow him @Douglas_Main. Follow us @livescience, Facebook or Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.

Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Rewriting Biblical history? Agriculture might be 5,000 years older than believed.
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2013/0320/Rewriting-Biblical-history-Agriculture-might-be-5-000-years-older-than-believed
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe