REHOVOT, ISRAEL—Seeds from fava beans, lentils, peas, and chickpeas have been unearthed at Neolithic sites in the Galilee. “This is an important discovery, enabling a deeper understanding of the agricultural revolution in the southern Near East,” researchers from the Weizmann Institute and the Israel Antiquities Authority said in a press release. The large number of fava beans unearthed at the site of Ahihud, where seeds of a uniform size were found husked and placed in storage pits, suggests that they were the preferred crop as many as 10,000 years ago. These beans could have been used for food and for future crops. “Despite the importance of cereals in nutrition that continues to this day, it seems that in the region we examined (west of the Jordan River), it was the legumes, full of flavor and protein, which were actually the first species to be domesticated,” they explained. To read more, go to "New Thoughts on Neolithic Israel."
