Food & agriculture · c. 23,000 years ago

Wild cereal harvesting

Foragers on the Sea of Galilee gathered and ground wild barley and wheat 23,000 years ago.

At Ohalo II in Israel, a submerged camp preserved some 90,000 plant remains, grinding stones and sickle-like blades. It shows people processing wild grasses into food more than 10,000 years before farming began.

See it in the living tree Wikipedia

Arcs above join it to what it stood on, arcs below to what it led to. The bar places this stretch on the tree's whole timeline.

What it built on 2

What it led to 1

Agriculture 9500 BCE

Related measurements

The dashed line marks when it first worked.

World population over a million years Latest: 6.27k million people (2000) Source: DeLong 1998, table 'Total World Population' (Kremer series); Kremer 1993, Population Growth and Technological Change: One Million B.C. to 1990, QJE 108(3)

World GDP over a million years Latest: 41k billion 1990 international $ (2000) Source: DeLong 1998, Estimating World GDP, One Million B.C. - Present; Wikipedia: Gross world product (DeLong table, cross-check)