Until the excavation of Gilgal I by Tamar Noy from 1973 until 1994, it was generally accepted that figs were domesticated around 6500 years ago.  Evidence from Gilgal I, suggests that figs were not one of the first domesticated crops, but the first domesticated crop. The site containing the figs (recovered from the floor of the burned Locus 11) also contained significant quantities of wild barley, wild oats, nutlets of wild pistachios as well as acorns of wild oak. 9 dried figs along with 300 drupelets were found among the remains.  All of the drupelets found were cenocarps, meaning they were produced without fertilization. The figs discovered are rather small, measuring only 18mm in diameter, but they are fully intact, meaning that they were likely dried intentionally for later human consumption.  All of the figs and drupelets are parthenocarpic, which does not produce viable seeds and must be raised via cuttings. 

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What is a parthenocarpic fig tree? Parthenocarpic is the natural or artificially induced production of fruit without fertilization of the ovules.  Parthenocarpy can be bred or has been found to occur in nature as a genetic mutation.  As a genetic mutation, these embryoless fig trees are incapable of producing offspring via seed germination (there were no birds eating this fruit, excreting the seeds on the ground and having new trees spring up).  The drupelets found at Gilgal I are significant then because they point not to a naturally occurring process, but rather direct human involvement with the crop. For someone would have needed to recognize the size or taste of these figs, realized that they were incapable of producing offspring from seeds, and taken cuttings to vegetatively produce more plants. 

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In addition to the Gilgal I, there are several other sites throughout the Jordan valley  

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 In contrast to seed-producing figs, a second kind of fig tree with edible fruits is a mutant that generates figs with embryoless drupelets by parthenocarpy (development of the ovary without pollination or fertilization). These figs become soft, sweet, and edible because of the persistence of the unfertilized syconia on the tree; this process differs from that in nonparthenocarpic female types, which shed their syconia when unfertilized. This parthenocarpy can be merely vegetative or, in other varieties, can be induced by the stimulus of the female Blastophaga inserting her ovipositor into the style of the female flower without oviposition. This stimulation prevents dropping of the fruit, allowing it to develop to maturity. Parthenocarpy, which results from a single dominant mutation P, is known to occur in hermaphroditic as well as in female figs (3, 17); it could have also occurred in the predomesticated fig. Because both parthenocarpic hermaphroditic and female fig trees do not set germinative seeds, they are reproductive dead ends unless humans interfere by planting shoots of these parthenocarpic trees.

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 If the endocarps contain wasp larvae they are called psenocarps.