Ancient European Farmers Used Manure 8000 Years Ago

The practice of farming has been around for thousands of years. Over time, though, we've made advances in how we plant, care for and harvest crops. Now, a new study has revealed that Europe's very first farmers were more advanced than we once thought; they used manure and watered their crops as early as 6,000 BC.

While this may not seem like a big deal, it's huge when it comes to understanding how advanced Neolithic farmers were at the time. Manuring involves a long-term investment in arable land because dung breaks down slowly and crops benefit from its nutrients over many years. These new findings, in other words, mean that these ancient people had a long-term approach to farming.

The researchers found enriched levels of nitrogen-15, a stable isotope abundant in manure, in the charred cereal grains and pulse seeds taken from 13 Neolithic sites around Europe. In all, the scientists examined 124 crop samples of barley, wheat, lentil and peas. This totaled about 2,500 grains or seeds. The remains dated from nearly 6,000 to 2,400 BC.

Farming had a long-term impact on society, which means that these findings show exactly when civilization began to develop and emerge. In addition, the new research could explain how early farming territoriality emerged.

"The fact that farmers made long-term investments such as manuring in their land sheds new light on the nature of early farming landscapes in Neolithic times," said Amy Bogaard from the School of Archaeology at the University of Oxford in a news release. "The idea that farmland could be cared for by the same family for generations seems quite an advanced notion, but rich fertile land would have been viewed as extremely valuable for the growing of crops. We believe that as land was viewed as a commodity to be inherited, social differences in early European farming communities started to emerge between the haves and have-nots."

It doesn't only show how society changed, though. The findings also have important implications for research into the diet of early farmers. It reveals that, in contrast to previous studies that suggested people ate mainly meat and dairy, it's likely that grains made up a good portion of these early people's diets.

The findings are published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.