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Plant behaviour from human imprints and the cultivation of wild cereals in Holocene Sahara
Anna Maria Mercuri, Rita Fornaciari, Marina Gallinaro, Stefano Vanin & Savino di Lernia
Nature Plants
volume 4, pages71–81 (2018)
Abstract: The human selection of food plants cannot always have been aimed exclusively at isolating the traits typical of domesticated species today. Each phase of global change must have obliged plants and humans to cope with and develop innovative adaptive strategies. Hundreds of thousands of wild cereal seeds from the Holocene ‘green Sahara’ tell a story of cultural trajectories and environmental instability revealing that a complex suite of weediness traits were preferred by both hunter-gatherers and pastoralists. The archaeobotanical record of the Takarkori rockshelter in southwest Libya covering four millennia of human occupation in the central Sahara gives us a unique insight into long-term plant manipulation and cultivation without domestication. The success of a number of millets was rooted in their invasive-opportunistic behaviour, rewarded during their coexistence with people in Africa. These wild plants were selected for features that were precious in the past but pernicious for agriculture today. Reconnecting past practices with modern farming strategies can help us to seek out the best resources for the future.
Tyrannohotep Member # 3735
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Welcome back to ES, Evergreen! Long time, no see.
Evergreen Member # 12192
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Thanks Tyrannohotep. I am around and checking out the latest info you guys post. I spend most of my time now on personal genealogy since in my mind the egypt debate has been resolved for the most part.
Regarding this study we should never allow ourselves to fall into the "domestication" trap when discussing sedentism (ie, civilization). Long-term plant manipulation and cultivation without domestication imply sedentism and hence a path to complex society.
Tyrannohotep Member # 3735
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quote:Originally posted by Evergreen: I spend most of my time now on personal genealogy since in my mind the egypt debate has been resolved for the most part.
What would you say the resolution is? Also, what are your thoughts on the Abusir el-Meleq study from last year?
Evergreen Member # 12192
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The resolution is that the Egyptians were primarily indigenous Africans and the Abusir el-Meleq study reflects sample bias.
The longer term need is more people of African descent in STEM related fields of study to combat centuries old unconscious and sometimes conscious bias in the biological and archaeological community.
Tyrannohotep Member # 3735
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Anyway, the point you raise about plant cultivation occurring in Africa without the crops themselves being "domesticated" (I presume this refers to their morphology) reminds me of something I read once about sorghum in Sudan. I don't know where I found it, but I recall it claimed that sorghum might have been cultivated without domestication traits showing up in the beginning.
Would the ancestors of ancient Egyptians and Kushites have been among these early sorghum cultivators in NE Africa? I am not sure. The studies of ancient Egyptian and Kushite remains that I've seen suggest that Middle Eastern imports like wheat and barley were more important to their diet than sorghum or millet. Take this analysis of Kushite remains for example:
quote:The ratio of carbon 13 to carbon 12 in the mummies from the Meroitic period, says White, shows that fully 84 percent of the Nubians’ plant intake consisted of C3 foods like wheat, barley, and fruit--all of which require more water than is normally available in the Nubian Desert. (C3 plants shun the heavier carbon isotope and so have a lower isotope ratio than desert-adapted C4 plants.) The Nubians, White figures, must therefore have been irrigating their crops, probably using the ox-driven waterwheel--a sort of Ferris wheel with buckets that dumped water from the Nile into irrigation channels. It was invented in Mesopotamia and brought to Lower Nubia by Meroitic settlers.
Lower Nubia, White speculates, may have been an agricultural hinterland that produced wheat and barley for Meroë. That might explain why mummies dating from after the fall of the Meroitic Empire around A.D. 350 ate about 9 percent fewer C3 plants than their forebears. When the Meroitic Empire fell, White says, the Nubians, who no longer had to grow so much wheat and barley, may have reverted to a more traditional diet of C4 plants, like sorghum and millet.
What would account for ancient Egyptians and Kushites developing this agricultural preference for wheat and barley over native sorghum and millet?
capra Member # 22737
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iiuc wheat and barley originally winter crops, could grow well in arid regions after summer Nile flood, but not well-suited to Sudanian belt with hot-season summer rain. so introduced already domesticated from Near East, grown in Nile valley.
pearl millet and sorghum good for tropical summer rain climate, though esp the latter good for growing on floodplains too. but domesticated later, no need to replace wheat and barley where those were already established with irrigation. not much rain in central Saharan belt even during middle Holocene.
Tyrannohotep Member # 3735
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quote:Originally posted by capra: iiuc wheat and barley originally winter crops, could grow well in arid regions after summer Nile flood, but not well-suited to Sudanian belt with hot-season summer rain. so introduced already domesticated from Near East, grown in Nile valley.
pearl millet and sorghum good for tropical summer rain climate, though esp the latter good for growing on floodplains too. but domesticated later, no need to replace wheat and barley where those were already established with irrigation. not much rain in central Saharan belt even during middle Holocene.
^ Good point there.
xyyman Member # 13597
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"sample bias"? So simplistic.....Do a deep dive. You mean not including Great Lake Africans? yes sample bias. But I agree more Africans need to be involved in STEM so they can analyze their own aDNA. And it is relatively cheap now. Equipment and such.
Evergreen Member # 12192
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quote:Originally posted by xyyman: "sample bias"? So simplistic.....Do a deep dive. You mean not including Great Lake Africans? yes sample bias. But I agree more Africans need to be involved in STEM so they can analyze their own aDNA. And it is relatively cheap now. Equipment and such.
No need to be pejorative or childish.
Doug M Member # 7650
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quote:Originally posted by Evergreen: Plant behaviour from human imprints and the cultivation of wild cereals in Holocene Sahara
Anna Maria Mercuri, Rita Fornaciari, Marina Gallinaro, Stefano Vanin & Savino di Lernia
Nature Plants
volume 4, pages71–81 (2018)
Abstract: The human selection of food plants cannot always have been aimed exclusively at isolating the traits typical of domesticated species today. Each phase of global change must have obliged plants and humans to cope with and develop innovative adaptive strategies. Hundreds of thousands of wild cereal seeds from the Holocene ‘green Sahara’ tell a story of cultural trajectories and environmental instability revealing that a complex suite of weediness traits were preferred by both hunter-gatherers and pastoralists. The archaeobotanical record of the Takarkori rockshelter in southwest Libya covering four millennia of human occupation in the central Sahara gives us a unique insight into long-term plant manipulation and cultivation without domestication. The success of a number of millets was rooted in their invasive-opportunistic behaviour, rewarded during their coexistence with people in Africa. These wild plants were selected for features that were precious in the past but pernicious for agriculture today. Reconnecting past practices with modern farming strategies can help us to seek out the best resources for the future.
More evidence of long term survival and adaptation strategies in Africa that laid the foundation for the development of agriculture at a later time. In fact we don't know for sure whether some form of "early agriculture" on a small scale did not emerge in various cultures prior to that in Anatolia. Most likely the key is the plant species involved along with the strategies and techniques of cultivation, harvesting and grinding which had been evolving for a long time prior to that.
the lioness, Member # 17353
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quote:Originally posted by xyyman: "sample bias"? So simplistic.....Do a deep dive. You mean not including Great Lake Africans? yes sample bias. But I agree more Africans need to be involved in STEM so they can analyze their own aDNA. And it is relatively cheap now. Equipment and such.
He was talking about the Ancient Genomes article about Abusir el Melaq.
"Abusir el-Meleq is arguably one of the few sites in Egypt, for which such a vast number of individuals with such an extensive chronological spread are available for ancient DNA analysis. "
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However the vast majority of samples are late period Above though, the oldest samples indictaed
Tyrannohotep Member # 3735
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@ Evergreen
If Africans were cultivating crops long before those crops are thought to have evolved their current "domesticated" morphology, what other evidence of their rural society would they have left behind? We know they were making pottery in Mali around 9400 BC, so it seems likely that they were settling down in (semi-?)permanent villages at that date. But wouldn't they have left behind things like agricultural tools, or the remains of agricultural settlements with tilled fields?
I do question the conventional dating of plant cultivation in sub-Saharan Africa to 5-3 kya. Most agriculture everywhere else in the world developed sooner after the Younger Dryas, so I wonder why there would be a delay in Africa.
Elite Diasporan Member # 22000
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Good read.
Tyrannohotep Member # 3735
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Any speculation as to what kind of people were "cultivating" these cereals? If it's in the southwestern corner of Libya, I'm guessing either Niger-Congo or Nilo-Saharan peeps.
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