Bronze Age herders spread farming around Asia
Livestock raisers took crops from two farming centers for a continent-wide ride
By Bruce Bower
Nomadic herding groups that inhabited Central Asia’s mountains and deserts more than 4,000 years ago spread crops across much of Asia and took up cultivation themselves surprisingly early, a new study suggests.
The findings fit with other emerging evidence that ancient Asians flexibly mixed herding and farming lifestyles. That type of adaptability enabled agriculture to initially spread via mainland herders and coastal seafarers, not migrating farmers or trading networks of urban civilizations as anthropologists had previously thought.