Sago-Type Palms Were an Important Plant Food Prior to Rice in Southern Subtropical China

Yang, Xiaoyan; Barton, Huw; Wan, Zhongping; Li, Quan; Ma, Zhikun; Li, Mingqi; Zhang, Dan; Wei, Jun

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0063148

Cited by 82 publications

(55 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…In New Guinea, agricultural dependence and intensification of production can be suggested from 5000 to 3500 B.P., with ditched fields, wooden spades, and probable sedentism (68). A similar timing is suggested for the introduction of rice and possible spread of banana in Southeast Asia (28,69). In northern South America, sedentism associated with tuber crops and other cultivars (squashes, fruit trees, and maize) dates to the Mid-Holocene in different regions (70).…”

Section: Comparing Timing Of Domestication In Vegecultural Cropsmentioning

confidence: 66%

“…based on archaeological remains of former cultivation plots on old land surfaces, dramatic degradation of montane rainforest to grasslands, and microbotanical evidence for high frequencies of crop plants (26,27). Plant microremains have also recently allowed recognition of palm (sago) starch consumption in tropical South China (28) and Borneo (23).…”

Section: Advances In the Archaeobotany Of Plant Domesticationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Convergent evolution and parallelism in plant domestication revealed by an expanding archaeological record

Fuller

Denham

Arroyo‐Kalin

et al. 2014

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

351

322

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Recent increases in archaeobotanical evidence offer insights into the processes of plant domestication and agricultural origins, which evolved in parallel in several world regions. Many different crop species underwent convergent evolution and acquired domestication syndrome traits. For a growing number of seed crop species, these traits can be quantified by proxy from archaeological evidence, providing measures of the rates of change during domestication. Among domestication traits, nonshattering cereal ears evolved more quickly in general than seed size. Nevertheless, most domestication traits show similarly slow rates of phenotypic change over several centuries to millennia, and these rates were similar across different regions of origin. Crops reproduced vegetatively, including tubers and many fruit trees, are less easily documented in terms of morphological domestication, but multiple lines of evidence outline some patterns in the development of vegecultural systems across the New World and Old World tropics. Pathways to plant domestication can also be compared in terms of the cultural and economic factors occurring at the start of the process. Whereas agricultural societies have tended to converge on higher population densities and sedentism, in some instances cultivation began among sedentary hunter-gatherers whereas more often it was initiated by mobile societies of hunter-gatherers or herder-gatherers.D omestication offers an ideal laboratory for understanding evolution because it is a recent phenomenon in terms of geological time scales and because the selection pressures that affect harvestability by humans are often known (1). Domestication is a product of human behaviors that regulate or increase food supply, but may also inadvertently lock humans into an increased reliance on managed taxa (2). Archaeological research provides a fossil record of past organisms undergoing domestication, often accompanied by cultural artifacts associated with habitat management or niche construction (3, 4). The effects of agriculture in terms of intensifying land productivity to support larger populations has been fundamental to the development of civilizations and the ongoing impact on and management of ecosystems (5, 6). Domestications have occurred separately on different continents and in different cultural traditions, and thus represent a set of parallel experiments from which to infer recurrent processes (Fig. 1). In some cases this represents parallelism of phylogenetically related organisms that have been subjected to similar selection pressures and developed identical or similar adaptations in different places. In others, we can consider domestication as convergent evolution, in as much as similar adaptations have evolved across crops in different plant families. These parallel adaptations have been defined as the "domestication syndrome" (7, 8). A distinction can be made between true convergence, in which analogous states have been reached from very different and unrelated starting points, versus parallelism...

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Section: Comparing Timing Of Domestication In Vegecultural Cropsmentioning

confidence: 66%

Section: Advances In the Archaeobotany Of Plant Domesticationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Convergent evolution and parallelism in plant domestication revealed by an expanding archaeological record

Fuller

Denham

Arroyo‐Kalin

et al. 2014

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

351

322

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In the Yangtze Delta area, economic dependency on rice was preceded by a long period of low intensity rice cultivation during which early farmers also collected and relied heavily on acorns, chestnuts and other wild plants (Zhao and Piperno 2000;Fuller and Qin 2010). By contrast, palaeobotanical evidence suggests that early Neolithic cultures in the Pearl River area depended on the exploitation of wild plants including sago palm, banana, and lotus roots, not rice (Yang et al 2012;Yang et al 2013). When did rice agriculture and the development of ricedependent cultures appear on the Fujian coast?…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

New evidence for Neolithic rice cultivation and Holocene environmental change in the Fuzhou Basin, southeast China

Zheng

Rolett

et al. 2016

Veget Hist Archaeobot

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A stratified profile of the Zhuangbianshan (ZBS) archaeological site (Fuzhou Basin, Fujian) was studied to investigate Neolithic era anthropogenic influence and associated environmental changes. Analysis of the archaeological sediments focused on phytoliths, palynomorphs and microcharcoal. Until now, a lack of direct evidence for agriculture has made it difficult to know if Neolithic cultures of this area relied on the exploitation of wild plants such as nuts and sago palm, or a combination of farming and foraging. Three types of rice phytoliths were found in ZBS archaeological deposits, providing robust evidence for rice farming as part of a broad-spectrum Neolithic subsistence economy centered on fishing and hunting. Chronologies based on AMS 14 C dates and artifact typology place the earliest rice during the Tanshishan (TSS) Period (5,000-4,300 cal BP) followed by a shift to economic dependency on rice in the Huangguashan (HGS) Period (4,300-3,500 cal BP). The ZBS phytolith assemblage contains high frequencies of rice husk (peaked-shape glume cells) phytoliths, with far fewer leaf and stem types. This indicates late stage processing activities such as dehusking, implying a focus on consumption rather than rice production. High concentrations of charcoal in the Neolithic ZBS deposits indicate local human settlement and peaks in fire use. The ZBS pollen record also reflects human settlement and peaks in local forest clearance during the Neolithic. Forest cover was renewed when the site was temporarily abandoned following the Neolithic. Rapid formation of the Min River floodplain began *2,000 cal BP in association with retreating sea level and intensifying anthropogenic influence. Prior to that, rice farming in the Fuzhou Basin was limited by the scarcity of wetlands suitable for agriculture.

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“…Previous research on micro-plant remains at the coastal site of Xincun (5300-4500 BP) revealed the importance of palms, roots and tubers in the local plant food exploitation strategy (Yang et al, 2013). This involved management of southern subtropical plants.…”

Section: Canarium Nutsmentioning

confidence: 99%

New radiocarbon evidence on early rice consumption and farming in South China

et al. 2016

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While the possibility of indigenous rice cultivation cannot be entirely ruled out, there is increasing evidence suggesting that rice farming was introduced to South China during the late-Holocene. However, determination of the exact timing of the spread of rice farming to South China is fraught with the lack of reliable radiocarbon dates. In this article, we present 15 new AMS 14C dates of charred plant remains recovered from late-Holocene sites of Shixia and Guye in Guangdong Province of South China. Our new AMS 14C dates suggest a later arrival of rice farming in the Pearl River Delta than previously thought. These new AMS 14C dates will shed new lights to an improved understanding of the environmental background and ecology of the southward

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Sago-Type Palms Were an Important Plant Food Prior to Rice in Southern Subtropical China

Cited by 82 publications

References 21 publications

Convergent evolution and parallelism in plant domestication revealed by an expanding archaeological record

Convergent evolution and parallelism in plant domestication revealed by an expanding archaeological record

New evidence for Neolithic rice cultivation and Holocene environmental change in the Fuzhou Basin, southeast China

New radiocarbon evidence on early rice consumption and farming in South China

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