Researchers believe agriculture was “invented” some 10-12,000 years ago in the Cradle of Civilization — Iraq, the Levant, parts of Turkey and Iran — an area that was home to some of the earliest known human civilizations. A new discovery by an international collaboration of researchers from Tel Aviv University, Harvard University, Bar-Ilan University, and the University of Haifa raises questions and suggests that trial plant cultivation began far earlier — some 23,000 years ago.The study focuses on the discovery of the first weed species at the site of a sedentary human camp on the shore of the Sea of Galilee.

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