Study of grinding stones suggests adaption to ice age may have led to birth of agriculture in China
Wednesday, March 20, 2013 - 07:00
in Paleontology & Archaeology
(Phys.org) —A researcher from Stanford's Archaeology Center, working with colleagues in China has found evidence to support the notion that early hunter-gatherers in China turned to processing plant foods in order to survive the last ice-age and in so doing may have started down the path that would eventually lead to farming. The team, led by Li Liu studied grinding stones dated back to between 23,000 and 19,500 years ago, and have found that their use suggests that those that used them were doing so to supplement dwindling food supplies found via hunting. The group has published a paper detailing their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.