Neolithic farming at Jeitun
Agricultura neolítica de Jeitún
- Date
- c. 6000 BCE · confidence medium
- Place
- Jeitun, Kopet Dag foothills, Ahal, Turkmenistan
- Credited to
- Jeitun culture (excavated by A. A. Marushchenko in the 1950s)
- Field
- Life & health
What it is
Villages of mud-brick houses in the Kopet Dag foothills growing wheat and barley, with domestic sheep and goats, the earliest known farming in Central Asia. Fields were watered with mountain streams.
The calibrated dates around 6000 BC are approximate; the farming package (wheat, barley, caprines) probably came from the Near East via Iran.
What it led to
- oasis agriculture on the Kopet Dag alluvial fans, the basis of Anau and Namazga-Tepe
- the first stable villages between eastern Iran and the Amu Darya
- forerunner of the irrigation later sustaining the Oxus civilisation (Margiana)