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Originally posted by Doug M:
Quoting your own work does not constitute supporting evidence.

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Contrasting Patterns in Crop Domestication and Domestication Rates: Recent Archaeobotanical Insights from the Old World

Dorian Q. Fuller*


This paper will also explore a pulse model of domestication, as the trajectory followed in the evolution of the full domestication syndrome appears to have differed in legumes. In particular, there appears to be a long lag-time between early cultivation and domestication (in terms of seed dispersal and germination inhibition) and seed size increase. In pulses, the seed size increase must be considered a form of cultivar advancement, occurring much later after the initial development of agriculture (Fuller and Harvey, 2006: 257) . This can be related to changes in agricultural techniques. This will be explored through the archaeobotanical evidence for two closely related pulses domesticated in India, the mungbean (Vigna radiata) and urdbean (Vigna mungo). A similar model seems to apply to Near Eastern pulses such as lentils (Lens culinaris) and peas (Pisum sativum), and possibly east Asian legumes, adzuki bean (Vigna angularis) and soybean (Glycine max). Finally, the case of West African pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum) is explored as a case in which a cereal shows some similarities to the pulse domestication model. A brief overview of the current state of archaeobotanical research in each case region is provided (the Near East, China, India and sub-Saharan Africa).



A final interesting case is provided by pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum), an important domesticate of West Africa (D'Andrea and Casey, 2002; Fuller, 2003; Zach and Klee, 2003). Archaeobotanical research in Africa remains very limited especially given the size of the continent. Most studies have focused on Egypt, but there is a growing database from across the Sahara and in sub-Saharan West Africa. As outlined by Harlan (1971) there are a wide range of crops with varying wild progenitor distributions in Africa (Fig. 14). In terms of major cereal domestications the northern savannahs and the Sahel zone south of the Sahara are important. Sorghum bicolor ssp. bicolor is likely to have originated from the eastern part of the savannahs, such as between Lake Chad and the Western Sudan, or north-west Ethiopia (Harlan and Stemler, 1976). By contrast, pearl millet has been linked to one, or more likely two, domestications in the Sahel zone west of Lake Chad (Tostain, 1992; Fuller, 2003; Neumann, 2003). An important factor in where and when agriculture developed in Africa is climate change. As wetter conditions of the early (10 000–6200 BC) and mid Holocene (5900–2200 BC) caused a northward shift in vegetation zones and much of the Sahara was savanna-like. This environment supported populations of pottery-making hunter-gatherers, who utilized a range of wild millet-grasses, including wild Sorghum bicolor in the east (Egypt's Western Desert), and these groups adopted livestock early, certainly by 6000–5000 BC (Marshall and Hildebrand, 2002; Fuller, 2005). As conditions dried, after 3500 BC, and populations with their herds were forced south, some appear to have taken up cultivation. Evidence for the actual transition to agriculture remains elusive but in the early second millennium BC widely dispersed populations in West Africa were cultivating morphologically domesticated pearl millet (D'Andrea and Casey, 2002). That pearl millet had dispersed to India by approx. 1700 BC (Fuller, 2003) suggests that this process began by the third millennium BC and saw rapid dispersal of cropping across the northern savannas.


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