A research recasts the highlands as a birthplace of domestication
For decades, the prevailing narrative of agriculture pointed to the Middle East. The “Fertile Crescent” was cast as the singular birthplace of farming, its innovations fanning outward to enlighten a passive world. Africa, in this telling, appeared as a recipient rather than a source.
But a growing body of research is reframing that history. The Ethiopian highlands, scholars now argue, were not on the margins but at the heart of early domestication—an independent cradle of agriculture that gave rise to crops which would eventually help transform diets and societies across continents.
“Agriculture marked one of humanity’s most profound transformations,” writes historian Isaac Samuel in his recent study ‘The Invention of Agriculture in Africa: Plant Domestication and the Spread of African Crops to Asia and the Americas.” He contends that the transition from hunting and gathering to farming and herding was not simply imported into Africa but emerged through local experimentation.
“The transition from hunting and gathering to farming was not a single event, but a complex, multi-stage phenomenon encompassing many discrete changes in human behavior, plant morphology, and ecological structure,” Isaac notes. What scholars call the Agricultural Revolution, he writes, unfolded independently in at least 24 regions around the world—five of them in Africa.
Across the African Neolithic, at least five distinct centers of domestication developed, producing nearly 60 native crops, from cereals to legumes and oilseeds. Many of these plants’ wild relatives remain rooted in the continent’s landscapes, underscoring Africa’s role as a laboratory of cultivation.
Among these centers, the Ethiopian highlands occupy a special place. “The region extending from the Nubian Nile Valley to the Ethiopian highlands was the origin of several domesticates, including cereals such as sorghum and teff, as well as cotton, watermelon, the oilseed noog, and the Ethiopian false banana known as enset,” Isaac writes. Many of these crops remain staples in Ethiopia today, linking modern diets to ancient ingenuity.
Agriculture in Ethiopia is not merely an economic base but a historical continuum. More than half the country’s population still depends on farming, and teff remains central to its food systems. Yet the deeper origins of such crops can be elusive. Archaeological evidence of teff, for example, is sparse, with more reliable traces appearing only in Aksumite-era contexts and later.
That absence does not diminish teff’s importance. Instead, Isaac argues, it highlights the need to connect modern farming practices with ancient agricultural traditions. Ethiopia’s landscapes—its high plateaus, valleys, and ecological variety—have long encouraged adaptation, innovation, and the intergenerational transmission of knowledge about planting, harvesting, and soil stewardship.
The story of Ethiopian agriculture stretches far beyond its borders. Once domesticated, African crops traveled widely, carried by migration and trade into new lands. Sorghum and cotton, cultivated in the Ethiopian highlands, spread across the Arabian Peninsula and into Asia, weaving Ethiopia into ancient networks of exchange where plants, people, and ideas moved together.
This corridor of diffusion positioned Ethiopia not just as a local breadbasket but as a contributor to the global agricultural mosaic. Yet, in the broader imagination, the Fertile Crescent long overshadowed Africa, casting it as secondary in the origins of farming. Isasc’s research challenges that view, pointing to Ethiopia as one of several independent centers of domestication across the continent.
That recognition reshapes Ethiopia’s place in history. Rather than a peripheral site, it emerges as an active source of cultivation, whose crops shaped diets and ecologies far beyond its highlands.
The continuity of these traditions remains visible today. In regions from Gojjam to Bale, farmers still plant teff, barley, pulses, and sorghum, sustaining livelihoods with techniques and knowledge passed down through generations. The rhythm of sowing and harvest echoes older systems of land use, a living inheritance of millennia-old experimentation.
Contemporary academic research continues to investigate these origins. Archaeologists, botanists, geneticists, and agronomists are working to piece together Ethiopia’s agricultural past. While the archaeological record remains fragmentary, the symbolic weight of Ethiopia’s contribution is already clear. Its crops are not only relics of ancient domestication but staples that continue to nourish millions.
In the terraces of the highlands, in the grains sown year after year, Ethiopia’s farmers are bound to that lineage. Their fields are more than sites of production—they are living archives of human adaptation and ingenuity.
“In the modern period, many of the African plant domesticates remain staples of their original regions,” Isaac notes. Teff and enset, central to Ethiopian diets, embody this continuity. They are heirs of a process that began thousands of years ago.
