Founder crops
The founder crops or primary domesticates are a group of
Definition
In 1988, the Israeli botanist
Different species formed the basis of early agricultural economies in other
Domestication
All of the so-called founder crops are native to Southwest Asia and were domesticated in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic period.[4][5] Many other crops were domesticated in West Asia during the Neolithic, as well as elsewhere, independently, in later periods.[13]
Cereals
The
Wild einkorn wheat (Triticum monococcum subsp. boeoticum) grows across Southwest Asia in open
Wild emmer wheat (Triticum turgidum subsp. dicoccoides) is less widespread than einkorn, favouring the rocky basaltic and limestone soils found in the hilly flanks of the Fertile Crescent.[14] It is also more diverse, with domesticated varieties falling into two major groups: hulled or non-shattering, in which threshing separates the whole spikelet; and free-threshing, where the individual grains are separated. Both varieties probably existed in the Neolithic, but over time free-threshing cultivars became more common.[14] Genetic studies have found that, like einkorn, emmer was domesticated in southeastern Anatolia, but only once.[16][17] The earliest secure archaeological evidence for domestic emmer comes from the early PPNB levels at Çayönü, c. 10,250–9550 years ago, where distinctive scars on the spikelets indicated that they came from a hulled domestic variety.[14] Slightly earlier finds have been reported from Tell Aswad in Syria, c. 10,500–10,200 years ago, but these were identified using a less reliable method based on grain size.[14]
Pulses
- Lentil (Lens culinaris)
- Pea (Pisum sativum)
- Chickpea (Cicer arietinum)
- Bitter vetch (Vicia ervilia)
Flax
Flax (Linum usitatissimum) was the first species to be domesticated for oil and fibres rather than food.[20] Its wild progenitor was Linum bienne, which can be found from western Europe to the Caucasus.[20] Wild flax fibres were used by humans as early as 30,000 years ago, at Dzudzuana cave in Georgia,[21] but genetic evidence indicates that domestic flax was initially selected for its oil.[22][20] In Southwest Asia, the oldest known wild linseed comes from Tell Mureibit and is c. 11,800–11,300 years old; thereafter, it is commonly found at Pre-Pottery Neolithic B sites across the region.[20] These remains are thought to represent the collection of seeds for pressing or consumption, since flax fibres are usually harvested before the seeds mature.[20] Domestic flax is distinguished by its non-splitting capsules, larger seeds, higher oil yield, and longer fibres compared to wild varieties.[20] It does not appear in the archaeological record until relatively late, at Tell es-Sultan (Jericho), c. 9900–9550 years ago.[20]
Cultivation and spread
Epipalaeolithic hunter-gatherers harvested the wild ancestors of the "founder crops" for millennia before they were domesticated, perhaps as early as 23,000 years ago, but they formed a minor component of their diets.[23][24] Even after they were brought under cultivation, the founder crops were not favoured over wild plants, and they were not established as staple foods until the early Pre-Pottery Neolithic B period, c. 10,700–9700 years ago.[25][24] This phase of "pre-domestication cultivation" lasted at least a thousand years, during which early cultivars were spread around the region and slowly developed the traits that would come to characterise their domesticated forms.[26]
Other crops
The founder crops were not the only species domesticated in southwest Asia, nor were they necessarily the most important in the Neolithic period.
As of 2018, many scholars disagreed with the "founder notion".[31] In 2012, scholars suggested that there were likely more than just 8 "founder crops", including 16 or 17 different species of cereals and legumes and figs. Larger DNA data sets and better analytical techniques suggest a more complex picture.[32] In 2000, a "new" glume wheat (NGW), a type of cultivated wheat which existed across western Asia and Europe was found in archeological sites of Hungary, then Turkey[33] and in 2023 in Bavaria, Germany.[34]
See also
Notes
- ^ Zohary, Daniel; Hopf, Maria (1988). Domestication of plants in the old world. Clarendon.
- ISBN 978-1-8572-8537-6.
- ^ Zohary, Hopf & Weiss 2012, p. 139.
- ^ a b Zohary, Hopf & Weiss 2012, "Current state of the art".
- ^ a b Banning 2002.
- S2CID 140691699.
- ^ "New Archaeobotanic Data for the Study of the Origins of Agriculture in China", Zhijun Zhao, Current Anthropology Vol. 52, No. S4, (October 2011), pp. S295-S306
- ISBN 9780520269965.
- ^ Dillehay, Tom D. "Earliest-known evidence of peanut, cotton and squash farming found". Archived from the original on September 11, 2007. Retrieved June 29, 2007.
- PMID 16894156.
- PMID 10318928.
- ^ Wilford, John Noble (28 June 2007). "Scientists Find Earliest Sign of Cultivated Crops in Americas". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 24 November 2020. Retrieved 24 June 2020.
- (PDF) from the original on 20 October 2023. Retrieved 19 October 2023.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Zohary, Hopf & Weiss 2012, "Cereals".
- ^ a b Kilian et al. 2007.
- ^ Ozkan et al. 2002.
- ^ Luo et al. 2007.
- ^ Haas, Schreiber & Mascher 2018.
- ^ Weiss, Kislev & Hartmann 2006.
- ^ a b c d e f g Zohary, Hopf & Weiss 2012, "Oil- and fibre- producing plants".
- ^ Kvavadze et al. 2009.
- ^ Allaby et al. 2005.
- ^ Richter & Maher 2013.
- ^ a b Arranz-Otaegui et al. 2018.
- ^ a b Arranz-Otaegui 2021.
- ^ Fuller, Willcox & Allaby 2011.
- from the original on 2021-11-20. Retrieved 2023-06-25.
- ISBN 978-1-8572-8537-6.
- S2CID 25141013.
- ^ "Figs likely first domesticated crop". 8 June 2006.
- ^ Kris Hirst (2018-08-31). "Were There Really Only Eight Founder Crops in Farming History?". ThoughtCo. Archived from the original on 2023-05-25. Retrieved 2023-05-25.
- from the original on 2023-05-25. Retrieved 2023-05-25.
- S2CID 225168770.
- ^ "7.000 Jahre altes Urgetreide begeistert Experten". BR24 (in German). 2023-05-25. Archived from the original on 2023-05-25. Retrieved 2023-05-25.
References
- Allaby, Robin G.; Peterson, Gregory W.; Merriwether, David Andrew; Fu, Yong-Bi (2005). "Evidence of the domestication history of flax (Linum usitatissimum L.) from genetic diversity of the sad2 locus". Theoretical and Applied Genetics. 112 (1): 58–65. from the original on 2022-05-06. Retrieved 2022-05-06.
- Arranz-Otaegui, Amaia; González Carretero, Lara; Roe, Joe; Richter, Tobias (2018). ""Founder crops" v. wild plants: Assessing the plant-based diet of the last hunter-gatherers in southwest Asia". Quaternary Science Reviews. 186: 263–283. ISSN 0277-3791.
- Arranz-Otaegui, Amaia (2021). "Archaeology of Plant Foods. Methods and Challenges in the Identification of Plant Consumption during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic in Southwest Asia". Food and History. 19 (1–2): 79–109. S2CID 245364458.
- Banning, Edward B. (2002). "Aceramic Neolithic". In Peregrine, Peter N.; Ember, Melvin (eds.). Encyclopedia of Prehistory, Volume 8: South and Southwest Asia. Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers.
- Fuller, Dorian Q.; Willcox, George; Allaby, Robin G. (2011). "Cultivation and domestication had multiple origins: arguments against the core area hypothesis for the origins of agriculture in the Near East". World Archaeology. 43 (4): 628–652. from the original on 2023-12-20. Retrieved 2022-05-06.
- Haas, Matthew; Schreiber, Mona; Mascher, Martin (2018). "Domestication and crop evolution of wheat and barley: Genes, genomics, and future directions". Journal of Integrative Plant Biology. 61 (3): 204–225. S2CID 53248430.
- Kilian, B.; Ozkan, H.; Walther, A.; Kohl, J.; Dagan, T.; Salamini, F.; Martin, W. (2007). "Molecular diversity at 18 loci in 321 wild and 92 domesticate lines reveal no reduction of nucleotide diversity during Triticum monococcum (Einkorn) domestication: implications for the origin of agriculture". Molecular Biology and Evolution. 24 (12): 2657–2668. PMID 17898361.
- Kvavadze, Eliso; Bar-Yosef, Ofer; Belfer-Cohen, Anna; Boaretto, Elisabetta; Jakeli, Nino; Matskevich, Zinovi; Meshveliani, Tengiz (2009). "30,000-Year-Old Wild Flax Fibers". Science. 325 (5946): 1359. from the original on 2022-05-06. Retrieved 2022-05-06.
- Luo, M.-C.; Yang, Z.-L.; You, F. M.; Kawahara, T.; Waines, J. G.; Dvorak, J. (2007). "The structure of wild and domesticated emmer wheat populations, gene flow between them, and the site of emmer domestication". Theoretical and Applied Genetics. 114 (6): 947–959. from the original on 2023-12-20. Retrieved 2022-05-06.
- Ozkan, H.; Brandolini, A.; Schäfer-Pregl, R.; Salamini, F. (2002). "AFLP analysis of a collection of tetraploid wheats indicates the origin of emmer and hard wheat domestication in southeast Turkey". Molecular Biology and Evolution. 19 (10): 1797–1801. PMID 12270906.
- Richter, Tobias; Maher, Lisa A. (2013). "Terminology, process and change: reflections on the Epipalaeolithic of South-west Asia". Levant. 45 (2): 121–132. S2CID 161961145.
- Weiss, Ehud; Kislev, Mordechai E.; Hartmann, Anat (2006). "Autonomous Cultivation Before Domestication". Science. 312 (5780): 1608–1610. from the original on 2022-05-10. Retrieved 2022-05-10.
- ISBN 978-0-19-954906-1.