BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS—Population geneticists Iosif Lazaridis and David Reich of Harvard Medical School suggest that farming was developed by two different populations in the Middle East. They obtained genetic material, which is poorly preserved in hot climates, from the tiny ear bones of 44 people who lived in the Middle East between 3,500 and 14,000 years ago. Nature reports the researchers found that the Neolithic farmers who lived across the Zagros Mountains of western Iran were more closely related to hunter-gatherers in the region than they were to farmers in the southern Levant. “There has been a school of thought arguing that everything happens first in the southern Levant and everyone learns how to be farmers in from this initial dispersal,” said Roger Matthews of the University of Reading, who is also co-director of the Central Zagros Archaeological Project. “But the archaeological evidence shows very strong local traditions that are clearly not in communication with each other, persisting for centuries if not millennia.” These two groups of farmers may have eventually mixed while looking for tool-making materials in eastern Turkey. For more, go to "Europe's First Farmers."