[In Depth] First farmers' motley roots

Farming was such a good idea when it was invented 10,000 to 12,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent that it was quickly adopted by several different groups of people. According to three teams who used new techniques to gain glimpses of the nuclear DNA of the world's very first farmers, farming was adopted by at least three genetically distinct groups scattered across the Middle East and Anatolia. The research found that early farmers of Israel and Jordan were genetically distinct from those in