The Emergence of Fruit Tree Horticulture in Chalcolithic Southern Levant

This paper reviews our current knowledge of fruit tree cultivation in the Levantine region. Plant remains recovered from archaeological excavations indicate that the olive, grapevine, fig, date palm, and pomegranate were the first fruit trees to be domesticated in southwest Asia and Europe. Compared to the evidence for the origin of cultivated cereals and pulses in the Old World, the information on the beginning of horticulture is fragmentary. This paper gathers all recent archaeological and archaeobotanical information regarding early fruit tree cultivation and argues that the central Jordan Valley may have been the primary area of their domestication. The onset of this development, which can be considered part of the Secondary Product Revolution, is dated to ca. 7000 years BP.