the article suggests that farmers from different regions domesticated different animals and farmed different crops and concludes this as a strong cultural tradition that could not have been communicated.
I don't agree with this. What these communities were domesticating or farming is indicative of their local geography and would worked best for them in that region, it's not enough to conclude that since they are farming different crops, then they must have come up with idea independently. That's like saying we found group A burning wood and group B burning leaves therefor they must have discovered fire independently.
If you can find tools or instruments that are unique or specific documents that highlights varied farming processes that are unique then you have a better argument, and even then I wouldn't state it as conclusively as the article suggests.
> What these communities were domesticating or farming is indicative of their local geography and would worked best for them in that region, it's not enough to conclude that since they are farming different crops, then they must have come up with idea independently. That's like saying we found group A burning wood and group B burning leaves therefor they must have discovered fire independently.
This does not reflect the observed behavior of humans. As noted here, hunter-gatherers generally are not willing to start farming even when a model for that lifestyle is known to them. Moving farmers are extremely reluctant (with good reason!) to just eat what's available in the new area. The Polynesians spread all over the Pacific, and they did it by bringing their pigs, chickens, and roots with them. The part of the Polynesian diet that reflects local geography is: fish. Europeans came to America and they brought their crops and animals with them too. They did copy local crops -- but they copied them from local farmers, not from the wilderness (wild plants are never going to compete with food crops anyway -- they are adapted to radically different circumstances). And to this day we eat more wheat than maize in the US, because that is our cultural tradition. Local geography has nothing to do with that.
For knowledge to be transferred from one group to another, all it takes is one person. For genetic markers to change it would need at least two, in good health and enough intermingling for it to be evident.
On the face of it seems highly unlikely to me that two groups had a level of contact that was enough for farming knowledge to be spread between them but not enough for genetic flow between them.
Farming is not a simple technology. It's a way of life and encompasses a package of technologies.
And the crops and animals raised in the respective origins could be raised in both locations so there's no obvious reason why diffusion of the farming knowledge would not be accompanied by the spread of those crops and animals.
I don't agree with this. What these communities were domesticating or farming is indicative of their local geography and would worked best for them in that region, it's not enough to conclude that since they are farming different crops, then they must have come up with idea independently. That's like saying we found group A burning wood and group B burning leaves therefor they must have discovered fire independently.
If you can find tools or instruments that are unique or specific documents that highlights varied farming processes that are unique then you have a better argument, and even then I wouldn't state it as conclusively as the article suggests.