Transition to farming simultaneous across most of Fertile Crescent

A rich assemblage of fossils and artefacts in the foothills of the Zagros Mountains in Iran has revealed that the early inhabitants of the region began cultivating cereal grains for agriculture between 12,000 and 9,800 years ago.

The discovery implies that the transition from foraging to farming took place at roughly the same time across the entire Fertile Crescent, not in a single core area of the “cradle of civilization,” as previously thought.
Until recently, political pressures had limited excavations of archaeological sites in the eastern Fertile Crescent, or modern-day Iran, while findings to the west—at sites in Cyprus, Syria, Turkey and Iraq, for example—provided detailed clues to the origins of agriculture.[...] aaas.org

Actualización 09-07-13. El comienzo de la agricultura en el Creciente Fértil estuvo más extendido de lo que se pensaba
La agricultura puede haber surgido simultáneamente en muchos lugares de todo el Creciente Fértil, según sugiere una nueva investigación.
Antiguos morteros y herramientas de molienda descubiertas en un gran montículo, en las montañas Zagros de Irán, revelan que la gente estaba moliendo trigo y cebada hace unos 11.000 años...