Overview

• The PNAS study documents organized harvesting of wild barley at Toda cave roughly 9,200 years ago using stone sickles.
• Charred plant remains provide the earliest local evidence for human use of pistachio and apple alongside other wild species.
• Use-wear on mostly limestone blades points to plant-cutting tools likely hafted into sickles for systematic reaping.
• Botanical analyses indicate the area, now arid in the Pamir rain shadow, was wetter at the time, facilitating extensive plant exploitation.
• Domesticated barley appears in the region about 8,000 years ago, likely arriving from present-day Iran, supporting a diffuse, often unintentional path to agriculture.