Between Archaeology and Text: The Origins of Rice Consumption and Cultivation in the Middle East and the Mediterranean

Muthukumaran, Sureshkumar

doi:10.5334/pia.465

Cited by 25 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…Our review of the historical sources suggests that taro arrived in southwestern Asia and the Mediterranean region by the 5th century BC and perhaps earlier. Like rice, for which literary evidence suggests cultivation in Mesopotamia from the 12th century BC [ 116 ], taro could have been grown in the flooded plains of ancient Iraq before being taken westwards to the Mediterranean.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Literary evidence for taro in the ancient Mediterranean: A chronology of names and uses in a multilingual world

et al. 2018

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Taro, Colocasia esculenta (L.) Schott, is a vegetable and starchy root crop cultivated in Asia, Oceania, the Americas, Africa, and the Mediterranean. Very little is known about its early history in the Mediterranean, which previous authors have sought to trace through Classical (Greek and Latin) texts that record the name colocasia (including cognates) from the 3rd century BC onwards. In ancient literature, however, this name also refers to the sacred lotus, Nelumbo nucifera Gaertn. and its edible rhizome. Like taro, lotus is an alien introduction to the Mediterranean, and there has been considerable confusion regarding the true identity of plants referred to as colocasia in ancient literature. Another early name used to indicate taro was arum, a name already attested from the 4th century BC. Today, this name refers to Arum, an aroid genus native to West Asia, Europe, and the Mediterranean. Our aim is to explore historical references to taro in order to clarify when and through which routes this plant reached the Mediterranean. To investigate Greek and Latin texts, we performed a search using the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (TLG) and the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae (TLL), plus commentaries and English and French translations of original texts. Results show that while in the early Greek and Latin literature the name kolokasia (Greek κολοκάσια) and its Latin equivalent colocasia refer to Nelumbo nucifera Gaertn., after the 4th century AD a poorly understood linguistic shift occurs, and colocasia becomes the name for taro. We also found that aron (Greek ἄρον) and its Latin equivalent arum are names used to indicate taro from the 3rd century BC and possibly earlier.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Literary evidence for taro in the ancient Mediterranean: A chronology of names and uses in a multilingual world

et al. 2018

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“…Interestingly, a single grain of rice was retrieved from the archaeological site of Mycenaean Tiryns in the Peloponnese dated to the 12 th century BC (Kroll, 1982), which Sallares (1991) interpreted to represent long‐distance trade between Asia and the Mediterranean. Akkadian texts of the 12 th century BC indicate rice cultivation of comparable antiquity on the flood plains of modern Syria (Muthukumaran, 2014). Thus, rice was plausibly traded between Syria and the eastern Mediterranean at that time, even though neither the Greeks nor Romans adopted it as a food crop (Sallares, 1991).…”

Section: Medicinal Exotic and Expensive: Early Trade In Cane And Ricementioning

confidence: 99%

Looking beyond history: tracing the dispersal of the Malaysian complex of crops to Africa

Grimaldi

Andel

Denham

2022

American J of Botany

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In his 1959 book, Africa: Its Peoples and Their Culture History, George P. Murdock suggested that a Malaysian complex of crops dispersed to Africa in ancient times across the Indian Ocean along the Sabaean Lane. The Malaysian complex comprised bananas, sugarcane, taro, three yam species, rice, Polynesian arrowroot, breadfruit, coconut, areca palm, and betel leaf. Except for rice, arrowroot, and potentially taro, most of these crops were domesticated in the Island Southeast Asia-New Guinea region, from where they dispersed to Africa. Our reassessment of agronomic, archaeological, classical, genetic, and historical sources shows that we need to go beneath standard historical narratives to recover a much more ancient and complex history of crop introductions to Africa. Despite considerable uncertainty and fragmented research, we were able to conclude that the Malaysian complex of crops did not arrive in Africa as a complete assemblage at one time or along one route. Multiple lines of evidence suggest that these crops arrived in Africa at different times and followed different pathways of introduction to the continent.

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“…The most ancient reliable reference is a text in Elamite from the Persepolis Fortification Archive dated to the late Achaemenid period (late 6 th -5 th c. BC) indicating that rice was grown along the royal road between Susa and Persepolis in the Fars province (Muthukumaram 2014). The Akkadian term kurângu found in some Assyrian texts dated to the 12 th c. and 8 th -7 th c. BC has been hypothetically translated as rice (Potts 1997, Muthukumaran 2014) but its meaning is not completely certain (Jursa 1999(Jursa -2000. Diodorus of Sicily (Bibliotheca historica, XIX.13.6) mentions the presence of rice in Susiana in 317/318 BC (Bizière 1975: 24).…”

Section: Evidence Of Rice Growing In the Arabian Peninsula And Neighbouring Regionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Diodorus of Sicily (Bibliotheca historica, XIX.13.6) mentions the presence of rice in Susiana in 317/318 BC (Bizière 1975: 24). Zhang Qian, the Chinese ambassador to Central Asia during the 2 nd c. BC, notes that rice was cultivated in Mesopotamia and Parthia (Shiji Dayuan 123, quoted by Muthukumaran 2014). The discovery of 373 grains of rice on a storage room floor dated to the 1 st c. AD in the Ville Royale II in Susa (Miller 1981) as well as the presence of rice-husk impressions on mud bricks from several sites in the South Dez plain of Susiana in Iran, dated from 25 BC to 250 AD, indicate that rice was locally grown in this region during this period (Miller 2011).…”

Section: Evidence Of Rice Growing In the Arabian Peninsula And Neighbouring Regionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Crop processing, consumption and trade of Asian rice (Oryza sativa L.) in the Arabian Peninsula during Antiquity: earliest evidence from Mleiha (third c. AD), United Arab Emirates

Dabrowski

Bouchaud

Tengberg

et al. 2021

Archaeol Anthropol Sci

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Asian rice (Oryza sativa L.) was identified, among other plant remains, from several contexts in a fortified elite residence at the site of Mleiha (United Arab Emirates) that was partially destroyed by fire in the 3 rd century AD.These remains, present both as isolated grains and clusters of rice, constitute the earliest example of the species in the Arabian Peninsula and raise numerous questions on the role of rice in local economies during the Late Pre-Islamic period. The discussion focuses on two aspects of the finds. On the one hand the state of preservation and the archaeological contexts of the rice remains are investigated in detail in order to reconstruct crop processing activities that might have taken place within the building as well as different aspects of the preparation and consumption of what seems to have been a rare crop. On the other hand we discuss the origin of the Mleiha rice weighing the possible cultivation in local irrigated date palm gardens against its importation through the longdistance trade networks across the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean that are well attested by archaeological and textual sources for the period of concern.

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Between Archaeology and Text: The Origins of Rice Consumption and Cultivation in the Middle East and the Mediterranean

Cited by 25 publications

References 13 publications

Literary evidence for taro in the ancient Mediterranean: A chronology of names and uses in a multilingual world

Literary evidence for taro in the ancient Mediterranean: A chronology of names and uses in a multilingual world

Looking beyond history: tracing the dispersal of the Malaysian complex of crops to Africa

Crop processing, consumption and trade of Asian rice (Oryza sativa L.) in the Arabian Peninsula during Antiquity: earliest evidence from Mleiha (third c. AD), United Arab Emirates

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