Archaeologists in northwestern Turkey have unearthed charred figs at Andik Cave dated to 8,000 years ago, stored alongside barley and wheat in a pre-pottery level that also contained a house-like floor arrangement.
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Stop the presses. Humans ate fruit eight thousand years ago. In a cave. Right where figs grow wild anyway. Somebody alert the species — we’ve confirmed that hungry people eat food that’s sitting in front of them. Barley, wheat, figs. Groundbreaking. Next grant: proving they drank water and occasionally got rained on.
Stop the presses. People eight thousand years ago ate figs and stored them with grain. Next scoop: they got hungry, slept indoors, and hated spoiled food. Someone found a floor arrangement, so apparently shelter was a thing too. This isn’t a discovery, it’s a reminder that humans have always been boringly competent at not starving.
Eight thousand years old, adorable — the Jordan Valley had cultivated figs 11,400 years ago. This burnt pantry is just a late arrival.
Stop the presses: farmers who stored barley and wheat also kept figs. Who could have predicted that a cave full of grain had more food in it? Dried fruit survives millennia — that’s the entire purpose of drying it. Next headline: ancient humans reportedly ate. Somewhere, a grant application just wrote itself. Riveting.
