Egypt
BBC News
- Evidence Of Prehistoric Dairy Production Found In The Sahara
Discovery News (Emily Sohn) More than 7,000 years ago, prehistoric people in the African Sahara were making dairy products, such as butter, yogurt and cheese. The discovery, based on the identification of dairy fats on ancient pottery shards found in...
- Domesticating Cattle Not As Easy As Once Thought
Past Horizons A new genetic study has revealed that all Taurine cattle are descended from as few as 80 animals that were domesticated from wild ox in the Near East. An international team of scientists from the CNRS and National Museum of...
- Early Use And Spread Of Domesticated Animals
It's a very slow news day today, so here are a couple of off-topic items to keep you going: Just when did the cows come home? The Jerusalem Post Until now, researchers thought that the processing, storage and use of domesticated cow, sheep and goats'...
- More Re Neolithic Settlement Found In The Faiyum
Science Daily Archaeologists from UCLA and the University of Groningen (RUG) in the Netherlands have found the earliest evidence ever discovered of an ancient Egyptian agricultural settlement, including farmed grains, remains of domesticated animals,...
- African Pastoral: Archaeologists Rewrite History Of Farming
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/27/science/27farm.html A good article discussing the latest theories about the origins of agriculture. Agriculture appears to have been adopted in an entirely different way in Africa, and recent and ongoing genetic studies...
Egypt
Dispersal of pigs from the Near East
BBC News
This is of no direct relevance to Egypt, but for those interested in the dispersal of agricultural components from the Near East to Europe and Egypt, this may be of some interest.
The first domesticated pigs in Europe were introduced from the Middle East by Stone Age farmers, a new study shows. The international research project examined DNA in the jawbones or teeth of modern and 7,000-year-old pigs. The genetic investigation provides fresh insight into the immigration of ancient peoples and ideas.
The scientists tell the journal PNAS that the incoming farmers brought more than just ideas - they brought examples of domesticated livestock. Agriculture is thought to have begun about 12,000 years ago, in the central and western parts of the Middle East, known as the Near East to archaeologists. Between 6,800-4,000 BC, farming methods spread across Europe, but the question of how these methods spread has not been fully established.
The two competing theories are that farming spread through cultural exchange, possibly during trading or that people migrated to Europe bringing their expertise with them. A previous study, in 2005, analysed modern pig DNA and showed that all modern pigs are descended from European wild boar. This led researchers to conclude that early Europeans domesticated pigs independently of other farming methods. This new study, however, has discovered that the first domesticated pigs in Europe did have Near Eastern ancestry, indicating that farmers migrated to Europe, bringing their "package" of livestock and farming methods with them.
See the above for more.
Also covered on
EurekAlert
Los Angeles Times
- Evidence Of Prehistoric Dairy Production Found In The Sahara
Discovery News (Emily Sohn) More than 7,000 years ago, prehistoric people in the African Sahara were making dairy products, such as butter, yogurt and cheese. The discovery, based on the identification of dairy fats on ancient pottery shards found in...
- Domesticating Cattle Not As Easy As Once Thought
Past Horizons A new genetic study has revealed that all Taurine cattle are descended from as few as 80 animals that were domesticated from wild ox in the Near East. An international team of scientists from the CNRS and National Museum of...
- Early Use And Spread Of Domesticated Animals
It's a very slow news day today, so here are a couple of off-topic items to keep you going: Just when did the cows come home? The Jerusalem Post Until now, researchers thought that the processing, storage and use of domesticated cow, sheep and goats'...
- More Re Neolithic Settlement Found In The Faiyum
Science Daily Archaeologists from UCLA and the University of Groningen (RUG) in the Netherlands have found the earliest evidence ever discovered of an ancient Egyptian agricultural settlement, including farmed grains, remains of domesticated animals,...
- African Pastoral: Archaeologists Rewrite History Of Farming
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/27/science/27farm.html A good article discussing the latest theories about the origins of agriculture. Agriculture appears to have been adopted in an entirely different way in Africa, and recent and ongoing genetic studies...