Biotech Updates

Genomes Study Reveals that Farming was Invented Twice

July 6, 2016

Farming was invented in the Middle East not just once, but twice, according to genome study reported in Nature and posted in BioRxiv.

Population geneticists at Harvard Medical School analyzed the genomes of 44 Middle Eastern individuals who lived between 14,000 to 3,500 years ago during the Neolithic period. The team found significant differences in the genomes of those from the southern Levant region, including Israel and Jordan, and those living across the Zagros Mountains in western Iran. These results indicate that hunter-gatherers in the southern Levant and Iran independently developed farming and spread the technology to Europe, Africa, and Asia.

Read more in Nature.