Flora Unveiled

34 i Flora Unveiled

The Khiamians have been called the “first farmers” because of the presence of a wide
variety of carbonized cereal grains and legume seeds found at the site. However, the term
“farming” is defined as the utilization of domesticated plants and/ or animals for food and
other resources.^13 This raises the question whether the carbonized seeds found at El Khiam
were domesticated. As we’ll discuss later, one of the diagnostic features of domesticated
cereals is the presence of nonshattering rachises. According to George Willcox, the earliest
appearance of fully domesticated cereals exhibiting a relatively high percentage of nonshat-
tering ears is thought to have occurred between 10,300 and 10,000 years ago, corresponding
to the early Pre- Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB), the stage following PPNA.^14 If so, it may be
more accurate to describe Khiamian cultivation practices as “horticulture” or “gardening,”
which can involve either wild or domesticated species. Since some of the genetic changes
accompanying domestication are invisible, such changes would not show up in the archaeo-
logical record, so it is possible that the crops grown by the Khiamians may have been par-
tially domesticated.
The Sultanians of the Southern Levant, named after the Ein as- Sulṭān spring near
Jericho where the first settlement was found, were contemporaries of the Mureybetians
in the north, and, together with the Khiamians, they comprise the PPNA period of the
Levant region (see Figure 3.2). Sultanian settlements began appearing along a corridor of
land extending from Jericho in the south to Abu Hureyra and Murybet in Syria to the
north. Although the Sultanians were similar in some respects to the Khiamians, they were
distinct in terms their tools, art works, and means of sustenance. A marked increase in the

Black Sea

Caspian Sea

Anatolia

Cyprus

Khiamian

Khiamian

Sultanian

Sinai

Kilometers

0 400

Mediterranean Mureybetian

Sea

Red

Sea

Persian

Gulf

Sedentary

foragers

Figure 3.2 Map showing the sites of Khimanian, Mureybetian, and Sultanian settlements in the
Northern and Southern Levant (indicated by the dashed lines).
Map based on: Bar- Yosef, O. (2014), South Turkish Neolithic: A view from the Southern Levant, in
M. Özdoğan, N. Başgelen, and P. Kuniholm, eds., The Neolithic in Turkey, Vol. 6. Archaeology and Art
Publications, Instanbul, pp. 293– 320, figure 2.