Figs Are First Cultivated Crop, Finding Suggests

Archeologists report they have found evidence that people grew fig trees about 11,400 years ago, making the fruit the earliest domesticated crop.

That predates by about 1,000 years evidence that crops such as wheat, barley and legumes were cultivated in the Middle East, and it’s 5,000 years earlier than figs were thought to have been domesticated.

Remains of the ancient fruits were found at Gilgal I, a village site in the Jordan Valley north of ancient Jericho, paleobotanists Ofer Bar-Yosef of Harvard University and Mordechai E. Kislev and Anat Hartmann of Israel’s Bar-Ilan University reported Friday in the journal Science. Gilgal was abandoned more than 11,000 years ago.

The fig remains they found appeared to have been dried for human consumption, the researchers said.

The type of figs were a mutant variety that does not drop from the tree but stays there, becoming soft and sweet for consumption. It does not produce seeds and has to be propagated by planting shoots.

“Humans must have recognized that the resulting fruits do not produce new trees, and fig tree cultivation became a common practice,” Bar-Yosef said. “In this intentional act of planting a specific variant of fig tree, we can see the beginnings of agriculture.”

Fig trees are remarkably easy to propagate, he noted. A freshly cut branch shoved into the ground will sprout roots.

Other food remains found at the site included acorns and wild oats, but no other domesticated crops, they said.