5,200-year-old cereal grains from the eastern Altai Mountains redate the trans-Eurasian crop exchange

Xiao-hong, Zhou; Yu, Jianjun; Spengler, Robert N.; Shên, Hui; Zhao, Keliang; Ge, Jike; Bao, Yige; Liu, Junchi; Yang, Qingyun; Chen, Guanhan; Jia, Peter Weiming; Li, Xiaoqiang

doi:10.1038/s41477-019-0581-y

Cited by 142 publications

(101 citation statements)

References 56 publications

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“…On a regional scale, our reconstruction for the increasing trend of fire activity spanning the middle to late Holocene has also been reflected by several other charcoal records across the surrounding region in northern Xinjiang, such as Alahake Lake (Li et al, 2019), Caotanhu Wetland , Tongtian Cave (Zhou et al, 2020), and Daxigou Area (Zhang et al, 2004). It needs to mention that the limited number of these previous studies only cover a relatively short time-span during the middle and late Holocene.…”

Section: 1029/2020gl088049supporting

confidence: 59%

Holocene Grassland Fire Dynamics and Forcing Factors in Continental Interior of China

Wang

2020

Geophysical Research Letters

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Grasslands cover 41.7% of China's land surface and distribute mainly in NW China. To project future change of grassland fires, it is essential to explore paleofire dynamics. However, comparatively little is known about the patterns and driving forces of grassland fires in NW China due to the scarcity of paleorecords. Here, we present Holocene sedimentary records of grassland fire and vegetation in westerly‐dominated Xinjiang (NW China) to examine fire‐fuel‐climate interactions. We find that grassland fire regime is fuel‐limited, consistent with other grasslands worldwide. We reveal that burning increased throughout the Holocene, due to increasing moisture, grass cover, fuel load, and temperature of spring fire season. The Holocene pattern of burning coincides with several other records nearby and a global‐scale grassland fire record. Our results are different from monsoonal China where fuel load is not a constraining factor and more (less) fires occurred during colder/drier (warmer/moister) periods in the Holocene.

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Section: 1029/2020gl088049supporting

confidence: 59%

Holocene Grassland Fire Dynamics and Forcing Factors in Continental Interior of China

Wang

2020

Geophysical Research Letters

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“…These river valleys have served as agricultural experimentation zones for millennia . Farmers grew both southwest and northeast Asian crops in these foothills for the first time in the late 3rd millennium bce, representing some of the earliest agriculture in Central Asia (Spengler et al 2014;Spate et al 2017;Zhou et al 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The southern Central Asian mountains as an ancient agricultural mixing zone: new archaeobotanical data from Barikot in the Swat valley of Pakistan

Spengler

Tang

Nayak

et al. 2020

Veget Hist Archaeobot

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The mountain foothills of inner Asia have served as a corridor of communication and exchange for at least five millennia, using historically documented trade routes such as the Silk Road and the Tea-Horse Road. Recent research has illustrated the important role that this mountain corridor played in the dispersal of crops and farming technology between northeast and southwest Asia 5,000 to 1,000 years ago. However, the role of the mountain valleys along the southern rim of the Pamirs and Himalaya in facilitating crop dispersals has not yet been fully explored. Notably, ongoing debates over secondary dispersals of Hordeum (barley) and Triticum (wheat) into China and the routes of dispersal for the East Asian crops Oryza sativa (rice), Prunus persica (peach) and P. armeniaca (apricot) into northern India are continuing topics of inquiry. In this article, we add to these discussions by focusing on archaeobotanical remains from the Barikot site (ca. 1200 bce–50 ce) in the Swat valley of northern Pakistan. The Swat valley is an ancient settlement zone in the Hindu Kush-Karakoram foothills, whose cultural features have always had a strong link with inner Asia. The archaeobotanical assemblage illustrates that a diverse array of crops, with origins across Asia, were cultivated around the same settlement. Additionally, these farmers likely implemented seasonal cropping cycles and irrigation that required various labour inputs and water management regimes.

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“…The long-season cereals were likely well-adapted to environments of the more northerly latitudes and spread more rapidly eastward, than did legumes or other cereal varieties, such as tetraploid wheats. Both cereals spread into the Hexi Corridor, around the peripheries of the Tibetan Plateau, and eventually into the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River by the end of the third millennium BC 44,45 . While we can only speculate about what the agricultural strategies in the Taklimakan Desert during this early period looked like, based on analogies with neighboring regions 44 , we believe that a low-investment form of agriculture, near river edges or spring promotes complimented simple herding strategies.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Wheat, barley, and legumes had been widely utilized by agriculturists across the mountains and deserts of Central Asia before the second millennium BC 46,49,52 . Compared with developed irrigation agriculture in southern Central Asia, agriculture in northern Central Asia was usually associated with low-investment crops, such as naked barley and millets, which were characterized by wider tolerance in water and temperature but lower yields 44,52,53 .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Both cereals spread into the Hexi Corridor, around the peripheries of the Tibetan Plateau, and eventually into the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River by the end of the third millennium BC 44 , 45 . While we can only speculate about what the agricultural strategies in the Taklimakan Desert during this early period looked like, based on analogies with neighboring regions 44 , we believe that a low-investment form of agriculture, near river edges or spring promotes complimented simple herding strategies.

Figure 4 The spectrum of charred seeds from the Wupaer site.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Prehistoric agriculture and social structure in the southwestern Tarim Basin: multiproxy analyses at Wupaer

Yang

Zhou

Spengler

et al. 2020

Sci Rep

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The oasis villages of the Tarim Basin served as hubs along the ancient Silk Road, and they played an important role in facilitating communication between the imperial centers of Asia. These villages were supported by an irrigated form of cereal farming that was specifically adapted to these early oasis settlements. In this manuscript, we present the results from new archaeobotanical analyses, radiocarbon dating, and organic carbon isotopic studies directly from carbonized seeds at the Wupaer site (1500-400 BC) in the Kashgar Oasis of the western Tarim Basin. Our results showed that early farming in the oasis relied on a mixed wheat and barley system, but after 1200 BC was intensified through more elaborate irrigation, the introduction of more water-demanding legumes, and possibly a greater reliance on free-threshing wheat. These crops and the knowledge of irrigated farming likely dispersed into the Tarim Basin through the mountains from southern Central Asia. Improved agricultural productivity in the Tarim Basin may also have led to demographic and socio-political shifts and fed into the increased exchange that is colloquially referred to as the Silk Road. The Tarim Basin is located at the central point of the historic Eurasia trade routes; resting in the rain shadows of the Kunlun and Tianshan mountains, it is one of the driest and least arable areas in Asia. The Taklimakan Desert occupies the middle of the basin, and while receiving almost no rainfall, it evaporates up to 3,000 mm per annum. Glacial-melt streams from the mountains flow into the desert and mostly disappear in its hinterland. This landscape gave birth to the beaded oases that characterized the historic Silk Road. Archaeological and historical evidence attests to the presence of agricultural city-states or politically organized villages in these oases, likely being founded as early as the fifth century BC 1. Archaeologists have suggested that many of these urbanized oases housed populations of thousands to tens of thousands, with some notable examples including Qiuci, Yumi, Yanqi, and Loulan (Fig. 1) 2,3. Historians refer to these pockets of dense human occupation as the "Western Regions" 2,3. Prehistorically, these oases played a prominent role in cultural exchange and diffusion during the early globalization process 4-10. These city-states helped connect the two ends of ancient Eurasia and were the main channel between peoples in the regions of northern China and southwest Asia 11-14. For decades, archaeologists have recognized cultural similarities between ancient peoples in the Tien Shan Mountains, Pamirs Plateau, Ferghana Basin, and those that lived across the oases of Xinjiang 12,15,16. The study of the origin and evolution of these city-states, their cultural adaptations, and their response to climate change has been the focus of global historians, archaeologists, and paleoclimate scholars 9,17. Since the Swedish archaeologists, Bergman, first found the well-preserved mummies of the Xiaohe Cemetery in Lop Nur in 1934 18 , new prehistoric se...

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5,200-year-old cereal grains from the eastern Altai Mountains redate the trans-Eurasian crop exchange

Cited by 142 publications

References 56 publications

Holocene Grassland Fire Dynamics and Forcing Factors in Continental Interior of China

Holocene Grassland Fire Dynamics and Forcing Factors in Continental Interior of China

The southern Central Asian mountains as an ancient agricultural mixing zone: new archaeobotanical data from Barikot in the Swat valley of Pakistan

Prehistoric agriculture and social structure in the southwestern Tarim Basin: multiproxy analyses at Wupaer

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