Pre Historical Fava beana

Four charred seeds of the Fava Bean recently found at the archaeological site in western Carmel River Cave. These are wild plant seeds aged 14 thousand years - 4,000 years before the domestication of crops. They are the first evidence found of the original version of the plant.

The search for the wild ancestors - the original varieties of crops before they were domesticated - employs archaeologists, agronomists, biologists and geneticists in recent years. It allows to study the lifestyles and diets of ancient civilizations. The "Wild wheat" has been identified as the mother of wheat in 1906 by the Jewish botanist, Aaron Aaronson, in the area of Rosh Pina, Israel.

The Site of the River Cave includes a large cave and a terrace at the entrance, it is associated with the Natufian culture – a prehistoric culture that existed in the Levant about 15 thousand to 11,700 years ahead of our time. This culture has been essentially a transition period between the Paleolithic era characterized by the life of a hunter-gatherer and the Neolithic period associated with the domestication of crops and the establishing of agricultural communities and permanent settlement. This change in human settlement, is still regarded as the most significant revolution in human history, which occurred in the Fertile Crescent some 11,500 years ago.

Tests conducted by researchers discovered that the seeds aged about 14 thousand years, long before the agricultural revolution.

The Feva Bean seeds, found in a waste from the food, join a rich menu that was discovered in the ancient village. Its inhabitants hunted and ate all the animals in the area - turtles, snakes, rabbits, wild boars and deer, but also many plants collected from the vicinity of Mount Carmel. The Natufian descendants were probably those who started the agricultural domestication, which required a thorough knowledge of those plants.

The study is conducted by Dr. Valentina Karkoth from Weizmann Institute, Dr. Reuven Yeshurun, Prof. Mina Evron, and Professor Daniel Kaufman of the University of Haifa.