Near East grain culture spread rapidly to Europe, West Africa and the Nile Valley (Ammerman and Cavalli-Sforza, 1984; Zohary, 1986). By the 8th mil- lennium BP, Near East crops appeared in Greece, Egypt, along the Caspian Sea and in Pakistan. Central Europe was heavily farmed less than 1000 years later, and by 5000 BP farming communities spanned the area from coastal Spain to England to Scandinavia. Wheat and barley reached China about 4000 BP (Ho, 1969). The Chinese literature of 3000 to 2000 BPmen- tions the ‘five grains’: millet, glutenous millet, soybean, wheat and rice (Whittwer et al., 1987).
Most of the Near East founder crops (emmer wheat, einkorn wheat, bar- ley, lentil, pea and flax) travelled across Europe as a group (Fig. 6.7), picking up other crops along the way. Oats and flax began as weeds moving with the Near East assemblage, but were eventually exploited and became sec- ondary crops (Harlan, 1992). Many of the vegetables that appeared in Europe and the Mediterranean regions were probably developed through this route (Zohary, 1986).
The spread of agriculture across the Middle East and Europe could have been caused by cultural diffusion, where the new techniques were transmitted by simple learning, or by migration, where the transfer was associated with population expansion and intermating (Ammerman and Cavalli-Sforza, 1984). Sokal et al. (1991) tested these two hypotheses by examining 26 polymorphic blood proteins of extant people from 3373 loca- tions across the Near East and Europe. They found a clinal trend in the allelic frequencies at six loci that was significantly correlated with the local dates of agricultural settlement. This lends support to the migration hypoth- esis, by which the original stock of Near Eastern agricultural peoples was slowly diluted as their descendants moved west and mated with local peo- ples along the way.
Chapter 6
0 300 600 km
Explanation of whiskers einkorn wheat emmer wheat and its 4x and 6x free threshing derivatives barley
pea lentil flax
Age of sites - 3000–2000 BC - 4000–3000 BC - 5000–4000 BC - 6000–5000 BC - before 6000 BC
Fig. 6.7.The spread of the Near East crop assemblage to Europe, West Asia and the Nile Valley. The symbols represent estimated dates of spread and numbers represent study sites referenced by Zohary (used with permission from D. Zohary, copyright 1986, The origin and spread of agriculture in the Old World. In: C. Barigossi (ed.), The Origin and Domestication of Cultivated Plants, Elsevier, Amsterdam).
Indigenous African agriculture was considerably more diffuse than the Near East agricultural complex, and the African crops lacked cohesion.
However, the early agriculture of Africa was associated primarily with the savannah and it probably spread out from the Sahel and Guinea zones southward towards East Africa (Vavilov, 1949–1950; Harlan, 1992).
Sorghum, pearl millet (Pennisetum americanum), finger millet (Eleusine corocana) and cowpea reached India about 4000 years ago from Africa, along with cotton, sesame and pigeon-pea. While these crops became very important across all of Asia, native Asian crops were of little significance in Africa except for Asian rice (Oryza sativa), which was utilized where African rice (O. glaberrima) was already established. Most of the dispersals out of South-East Asia were seaward towards the Malay Archipelago (2000 BP) and then to the far-off South Pacific Islands. Agriculture reached remote Hawaii and New Zealand from South-East Asia about 1000 years ago (Emory and Sinoto, 1964).
Agriculture gradually spread across China over a period of several thou- sand years (Wittwer et al., 1987). Rice was probably introduced into South- East Asia from South China 5000 to 4000 years ago (Crawford, 1992;
Smith, 1998). Soybean remained close to home until recent history. The mil- lets, Setaria indica and Panicum miliaceum, were found in neolithic villages in Europe, and may have been introduced from China. However, the possi- bility of independent domestications cannot be excluded, as the Chinese centres were so remote and no other crops show similar distributions.
Several new crops reached the Near East from Asia and Africa approxi- mately 3000 to 2000 BP. Sorghum, sesame and the Old World cottons came from Africa, while common rice entered from Asia. These initiated summer crop agriculture as an integral part of food production (Zohary, 1986). Fruit- trees also arrived from the east about 2000 years ago, including apricot, peach and citron (Bailey and Hough, 1975; Hesse, 1975).
From the Mesoamerican centre, a maize–bean–squash assemblage gradually moved northward, picking up sunflower and numerous other native species on the way, to eastern North America, where it was well established by 4500 BP (Chomkos and Crawford, 1978; Berry, 1985).
Upon its arrival, it displaced the indigenous crops of sumpweed (I. annua) and chenopod. There is an ongoing debate as to whether these Mesoamerican crops diffused across the West Gulf Coast Plain or through the American south-east on the march west (Story, 1985). Movement south from Mesoamerica is difficult to trace for most crops, but at least maize had arrived in Central America (Piperno et al., 2000) and the Amazonian basin by 5000 to 4000 BP (Pickersgill, 1969; Bush et al., 1989). The South American domesticants, potato, groundnut and lima bean, had reached north to Mexico by 3000 to 2000 BP, travelling through either the Caribbean Islands from Venezuela or via Central America.
American crops were not known in the Old World until the ocean explo- rations of Columbus (Harlan, 1992).