Oldest wheat found in Çatalhöyük

Akkaya and a group of professors from her university worked on the analyses. "While analyzing several wheat samples, we learned that Professor Gordon Hillman, an honorary professor of archaeobotany at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London, had the world's oldest known wheat samples. We contacted him and he gave us a few kernels to analyze in comparison," she said. The analyses showed these samples to be 8,500 years old.

Akkaya, stressing that utmost care was taken with these kernels, noted that they, as Turkish scientists, were happy to have undertaken such an important discovery about Anatolia. "A previous analysis carried out on 6,000-year-old wheat samples had shown that wheat was grown in southeastern Diyarbakır's Karacadağ area. Our discovery has gone beyond this finding," she remarked.

"Generally, Turkish scientists go abroad to conduct such research and analyses or send samples to other countries to have them analyzed. But we carried out the analyses ourselves at our university. We will soon publish our findings in an international scientific journal," she added.