fbpx
 
Home / News, Videos & Publications / News / Desert & Water Research /

Negev Farming Began 5,000 Years Earlier Than Thought

Negev Farming Began 5,000 Years Earlier Than Thought

April 9, 2013

Desert & Water Research

NBC News — For thousands of years, different groups of people have lived in the Negev desert. But how did they make a living?

The conventional wisdom is that these desert dwellers didn’t begin farming until the first century, surviving instead by raising animals, according to Prof. Hendrik Bruins, a landscape archaeologist at BGU’s Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research.

However, Prof. Bruins’ new research suggests that people in this area have been engaged in agriculture since as long ago as 5000 B.C.

An experimental field in the Negev desert where ancient water irrigation methods are used.

An experimental field in the Negev desert where ancient water irrigation methods are used.

By radiocarbon dating bones and organic materials in various soil years in a field south of Beer-Sheva, he found evidence of past cultivation.

“I found a wonderful radiocarbon sequence of ages,” says Prof. Bruins. “And it was a great surprise for me.”

He discovered three distinct layers in the earth corresponding to three different periods of activity, with long gaps in between.

The first one dated from 5000 B.C. to 4500 B.C. and included a group of people with no known name but developed flint tools that have been found throughout the region.

The second period of agriculture, from 1600 B.C. to 950 B.C., corresponds to the time in which the Jews made their way from Egypt to Israel, according to Exodus and other books of the Bible.

The third layer corresponds to the late Byzantine and early Islamic period, when people were first known to practice agriculture in this area.

“Ancient farms, like those in the region today, likely cultivated vineyards, olives, wheat and barley,” says Prof. Bruins.

Read more on the NBC News website >>