For the First Time

The following comments relate to various aspects raised inthe short papers presented at the “State University of NewYork Conversation in the Discipline: The Origins of Agri-culture,” convened by M. N. Cohen in late 2007. As Cohen(2009, 591, in this issue) notes in his introduction, the con-versation focused on issues of “ancient health, paleopathology,paleonutrition, paleodemography, evolutionary theory, ge-netics, political prehistory, social organization, climatology,human behavioral ecology, archaeobotany, and Neolithic de-mographic transition theory. ” Cohen (p. 594) concludes that“post-Pleistocene parallel movements toward agriculture rep-resent an imbalance of resources and demand, or (population)pressure, in the wider sense discussed. ” This said, it seemsthat most of the papers approached the issue in general uni-versal terms, with little if any cross-reference to primary data,leading to a paradigmatic bias. This contrasts with the needfor “a contextualized and detailed exploration withinaspeciﬁccultural, temporal, and geographical case study” (Kuijt 2009,642, in this issue). Indeed, we concur that the variability ofspeciﬁc paths to the “agricultural transition,” whether in pri-mary or in secondary centers, should be stressed. With regardto paleodemography, most papers here reﬂect the sentimentthat “until relatively recently, most good data on the effect ofthe transition to agriculture came from North American sites,and little was known about the consequences of the transitionfor much of Europe, Africa, Asia, and South America” (Gageand DeWitte 2009, 653, in this issue). At the same time it isinteresting that Gage and DeWitte (p. 654) state, “We do wantto point out that this scenario is based on assumptions thatare all questionable (at best). ”Our personal approach relates mostly to primary archae-ological data, and, accordingly, the following discoursefocuseson the Near East, the area with which we are familiar. Thisrestricted but variable region is one of the primary (and per-haps the earliest) locales of agricultural origins. Here, theinitiation of a trajectory toward agriculture can be traced backto the earlier Epipaleolithic (ca. 22,000 cal. BP), some 12,000years before the emergence of deﬁnable domestication basedon morphological and genetic changes (e.g., Bar-Yosef 2001;Goring-Morris and Belfer-Cohen 1997; Weiss et al. 2008). Furthermore, a wide range of new and provocative data isemerging from the region. Indeed, evidence from Cyprus iscrucial in illustrating the complexity of human-plant-animalinteractions. Located just a short distance from the northernLevant, the island was systematically colonized in a directedmanner (“Go west, young man”) from at least the PrepotteryNeolithic A (PPNA; ca. 11,500–10,500 cal. BP), if not earlier.Colonists brought wild plant and animal species from themainland in sufﬁcient quantities to thrive and form viableherds over the long term. This preceded the appearance offully ﬂedged agricultural practices (with morphological do-mestication) observed both on the mainland and in Cyprusduring the Prepottery Neolithic B (PPNB), ca. 10,500–9/8,500cal. BP (e.g., Peltenburg and Wasse 2004; Vigne 2008; Vigneand Guilaine 2004). Moreover, some of the introduced specieswere never to be domesticated (e.g.,