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The dawn of agriculture in the Neolithic was a major development in the evolution of modern human culture. Although scientists agree that farming developed independently several times around the world, including in Africa, the Americas, and eastern Asia, the origins of many key crops, such as wheat, barley, and legumes, have been traced to the Fertile Crescent and the harvesting of wild grains by a people known as the Natufians, roughly 10,000 years ago.

Now, a new study by an interdisciplinary research team shows that, by at least 9,200 years ago, people as far north and east as southern Uzbekistan were harvesting wild barley using sickle blades as well.

The findings are in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The study shows that the cultural developments which served as stepping stones on the way to agriculture were more widespread than previously realized, challenging arguments that cultivation began as one group's response to population pressure or climate change.

The research was conducted by an international team of scholars, led by Xinying Zhou of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing and under the supervision of the director of the Institute of Archaeology in Samarkand, Farhad Maksudov. During their excavations of Toda Cave in the Surkandarya Valley of southern Uzbekistan, the team recovered stone tools, charcoal, and plant remains from the cave's oldest layers.

Archaeobotanical investigations led by Robert Spengler of the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology revealed that the people of Toda Cave were collecting wild barley from the surrounding valleys.

Other plant remains included wild pistachio shells and apple seeds. Use-wear analysis of the stone tools—blades and flakes mostly made from limestone—indicates they were used to cut grass or plant material, similar to finds from sites where agriculture is known to have been practiced.

"This discovery should change the way that scientists think about the transition from foraging to farming, as it shows how widespread the transitional behaviors were," says Xinying.

"These ancient hunters and foragers were already tied into the cultural practices that would lead to the origins of agriculture," Spengler adds.

"A growing body of research suggests that domestication occurred without deliberate human intent, and the finding that people continually developed the behaviors which lead to agriculture supports this view."

The research team will continue to investigate how commonplace these behaviors were in Central Asia during this time period. Additionally, the team is further exploring the possibility that these grains represent an early example of cultivation using morphologically wild barley.

If the grains were cultivated, it could mean that a separate origin of farming was being experimented with or that the tradition from the Fertile Crescent spread eastward much earlier than previously recognized. In either case, future research is likely to fill in many gaps in our understanding of the human narrative.