Seeking Agriculture's Ancient Roots

摘要

In his lab in a 12th century fortress that now houses the Archeorient research center here, archaeobotanist George Willcox pops the top off a plastic capsule filled with tiny black particles, spills them out into a petri dish, and puts the dish under a binocular microscope. Magnified, 50 times, the particles leap into focus. They are charred fragments of wheat spikelets from a 10,500-year-old archaeological site in Turkey called Nevali Cori.