This is Scientific American 60 Second Science.

I'm Cynthia Graber.

Got a minute?

Early farming began in the near east about 10,500 years ago.

Farming first reached the Balkans in Europe some 8 to 9,000 years ago and then crept

westward. Locals in Britain, separated from the mainland by the relatively newly formed

English Channel, did not start farming until about 6,000 years ago, but an analysis of sediment from a submerged British archaeological site called Boldner Cliff found something unexpected.

Amongst our Boldner Cliff samples, we found ancient DNA evidence of wheat at the site which was not seen in mainland Britain for another 2,000 years.

That's Robin Alibi of the University of Warwick.

However, wheat was already being grown in southern Europe.

This is incredibly exciting because it means boldness and inhabitants were not as isolated as

previously thought.

In fact, they were in touch one way or another with more advanced

Neolithic farming communities in southern Europe.

The work by Alibi and colleagues is in the journal Science.

The researchers showed that the wheat remains are genetically more similar to near-eastern

domesticated wheat than to local distant cousins, and they found no evidence of pollen,

meaning that the wheat was almost certainly imported.

In an accompanying perspectives piece in the journal,

archaeologist Gregor Larson of Durham University writes that the findings show that

DNA analysis can help scientists tease out details about the historical movement of plants and animal species.

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