Stone Age humans were raising and slaughtering domesticated sheep in Central Asia three thousand years before previously thought, new research shows. The findings suggest the Fergana Valley played an important role in the spread of pastoralism and possibly even agriculture across Asia. Some of these archeologists had “long hypothesized a much earlier arrival of agropastoralism from southwest Asia between the seventh and fourth millennia BCE.”They were right. The stone tools found at Obishir V also support the domestication hypothesis; these humans were hunting less and processing their food more. The Fergana Valley, the authors posit, could have been a "key node" in the dispersal of domesticated animals and plants from the Middle East to East Asia.

Source: The North Africa Journal April 21, 2021 15:03 UTC