The switch to agricultural life may have been smoother than assumed Xinhua / eyevine

It is a familiar tale: when humans started farming, their lifestyles changed radically and forever. People stopped foraging, and had a narrower, nutritionally poorer diet. But new evidence suggests we may need to rethink this story.

Farming arose in many places, but the “Fertile Crescent”, an area that today includes parts of Egypt, Iraq and other countries, was one of the first. Many archaeologists assume that there was a big shift in what people there ate when they became farmers 12,000 years ago. For thousands …