HumansCrops don't generally thrive in desert-like ground, but 1000 years ago farmers in Israel utilised refuse such as ash and bones to turn sand into fertile land 14 February 2025 One thousand years ago, people along Israels Mediterranean coast dug deeply enclosed plots in the sand, filled them with 80,000 tonnes of trash and used the fertile soil that formed for farming, allowing them to produce crops that would otherwise fail on such harsh ground.This represents the oldest-known, large-scale plot-and-berm system that allows crop-growing in sand, putting it among multiple, less clearly dated sites across the globe. It might even be the origin of such oasis-like agricultural sites in deserts, some of which still exist today, says Joel Roskin at Bar-Ilan University in Israel.