ROCHESTER, N.Y., Jan. 10 (UPI) -- Archaeologists digging in southern Croatia say the area was a hub for early farmers who spread their sedentary lifestyle from the Middle East into Europe.
Andrew Moore of the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York says farming villages sprouted swiftly in this Mediterranean coastal region called Dalmatia with the arrival of Middle Easterners already adept at growing crops and herding animals, ScienceNews.org reported last week.
Evidence of intensive farming has been found at Pokrovnik and Danilo Bitinj, two Neolithic settlements in Dalmatia, researchers say.
Radiocarbon dating of charred seeds and bones suggests plant cultivation and animal raising began almost 8,000 years ago at Pokrovnik and lasted for close to a millennium, they say.
"Farming came to Dalmatia abruptly, spread rapidly and took hold immediately," Moore says.
Pokrovnik and Danilo Bitinj residents grew the same plants and raised the same animals, in the same proportions, as Dalmatian farmers do today, Moore says.
"This is an astonishing demonstration of agricultural continuity from the Neolithic to present times," he says.
