Ancient Figs May Be First Cultivated Crops [audio 4min]

The discovery of figs in an 11,400-year-old house near the ancient city of Jericho may be evidence that cultivated crops came centuries before the first farmers planted cereal grains. Archeologists in Israel discovered the figs in an excavated house in a village called Gilgal 1. The fruits were mutant figs -- growing on a rare kind of tree that isn't pollinated by insects and won't reproduce unless someone takes a cutting and plants it. According to Harvard anthropologist Ofer Bar-Yosef, generations of people must have lived around wild fig trees until people figured out how to grow these mutants. Writing in the journal Science, Bar-Yosef and colleagues in Israel say these figs may now be the first cultivated crops. ~Website offers photos.