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A University of Warwick team led by Assistant Professor Robin Allaby said until recently scientists believed plant cultivation started in the Near East around 10,000 years ago, spreading into Europe and "dovetailing conveniently" with ideas about how quickly language and population genes spread from the Near East to Europe.

Initially, genetics appeared to support that theory, but the researchers said cracks are beginning to appear in the evidence underpinning that model.

Allaby's team said its mathematical model shows how plant agriculture actually began much earlier than first thought.

The researchers said even recent archaeological evidence has already begun to undermine the old model, pushing back the date of the first appearance of plant agriculture. The scientists said the best example is archaeological site Ohalo II in Syria, where more than 90,000 plant fragments from 23,000 years ago show wild cereals were being gathered more than 10,000 years earlier than previously thought.

Allaby and his team present their research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and also in a summary article in the journal Biologist.

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