Pulse domestication (lentil, pea, chickpea)
Domesticación de lenteja, guisante y garbanzo
- Date
- c. 8500 BCE · confidence medium
- Place
- Jericho, Tell Aswad and Çayönü, the Fertile Crescent
- Credited to
- PPNB communities of the Fertile Crescent
- Field
- Life & health
What it is
Cultivation of pulses with seeds that no longer split open on their own or have prolonged dormancy, forming, together with cereals, the founding Neolithic package. They provide plant protein and fix nitrogen.
Chickpea was domesticated in south-east Anatolia; lentil and pea in the northern Levant.
What it led to
- A balanced cereal-plus-pulse diet that reduced dependence on hunting
- Crop rotation that maintains soil fertility
- Reduced risk through crop diversification
Built on
- Cereal cultivation (pre-domestication)c. 9400 BCE
- Pre-domestication cereal cultivation
Made possible
- Three-field crop rotationc. 800
- Crop rotation
- Pottery pulse stews