Stone Age Farmers Showed Sophisticated Use of Fertilizers

Naked wheat grain from Koufovouno, southern Greece. Courtesy Amy Bogaard Claims about early agricultural practices and how much grain our ancestors ate are apparently full of… manure. As early as 8,000 years ago, Stone Age farmers across Europe were working their crop lands intensely, irrigating and strategically applying manure, according to new research published in today’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The findings also call into question previous estimates of how much protein in the Neolithic human diet was derived from animals rather than plants.