Agriculture in Palestine

Early Picture While Palestine carries in its soil and rivers records of its occupation by men for scores of thousands of years, its documented history goes back only three or four thousand years. A Neanderthal skull and Mousterian tools seem to belong to a people who had domesticated sheep, goats, cows and pigs fully 500,000 years ago. Acheulean stone implements recently found on the slopes above the western shore of Gennesaret are interpreted to have been hoes to till the soil used by men perhaps 100,000 years ago. Was this the earliest agriculture in the land? Or were there gardens on the plains still earlier? Sickle flints discovered not far from Mt. Carmel suggest harvesting grains about 10,000 years ago. Abraham found it a rich grazing land, and Lot chose the plains of the Jordan because he saw them as the "Garden of God," well watered and rich in food for himself and his cattle. His neighbors in the valley of the Jordan were ruralists, raising vegetables, grapes, and cereals. Jacob came down into the Jordan Valley from his night vigil with the angel and found "forage for his flocks, land for plowing and water abundant." Joshua's spies reported Palestine a "land flowing with milk and honey," bespeaking cattle, goats, camels and/or sheep, bees, flowers and fruits. Josephus, a Jewish nobleman, historian, and governor wrote during the first century that the soil in the country that "lies over against the lake of Gennesaret is so fruitful that all sorts of trees can grow upon it." Scripture references covering a thousand years of active Hebrew occupancy mention many agricultural products: onions, garlic, leeks, beans, lentils, cucumbers, melons, gourds, and mustard among vegetables; and mint, anise, cumin, myrtle, herbs, spices, and spikenard yielding flavors, perfumes and medicines. Millet, barley, wheat, and flax were harvested with sickles and beaten on threshing floors of hard earth; grapes, olives, figs, dates, mulberries, pomegranates, and occasionally apples are mentioned as fruits; "nuts and almonds" suggest at least two species of nut; oak (terebinth), locust, and tamarisk furnished animal and one human food; grass and the ubiquitous weeds (tares) helped to engage the cultivator's attention. Among flowers, rose of Sharon, probably narcissus, rose (yielding attar), anemones, mallows, lilies of the valley, and poppies are abundant over the meadows and rocky slopes in spring. Plowing, dig-