Fruits of Eurasia: Domestication and Dispersal

Project Information

FEDD

Grant agreement ID: 851102

DOI

10.3030/851102

Project closed

EC signature date 11 October 2019

Start date 1 January 2020

End date 30 September 2025

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 499 375,00

EU contribution

€ 1 499 375,00

Coordinated by

MAX-PLANCK-GESELLSCHAFT ZUR FORDERUNG DER WISSENSCHAFTEN EV
Germany

Periodic Reporting for period 4 - FEDD (Fruits of Eurasia: Domestication and Dispersal)

Reporting period: 2024-07-01 to 2025-09-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

As the world approaches 9 billion people it has become increasingly timely to study the processes that led humanity to this point, including the domestication of ancient crops and the intensification of their cultivation. Ancient people moved plants and animals around the planet and, in doing so, formed the cultivation systems that fuel demographic growth. The Fruits of Eurasia: Domestication and Dispersal (FEDD) project has focused on the most impressive chapter in the history of agricultural intensification: the movement of crops along the routes of the ancient Silk Road. The trans-Eurasian trade routes were responsible for bringing economically important plants from East Asia to Europe in prehistory and vice versa, shaping the cuisines of the modern world and allowing for the development of complex multicropping systems, including seasonal crop rotations. The FEDD team has consisted of an international group of top research specialists, with areas of specialty covering archaeobotany, history, art history, linguistics, ancient genetics, and molecular methods (ancient proteomics and metabolites). Collectively, these specialists have analysed archaeobotanical samples for 13 archaeological sites covering 6 countries. They have implemented a multidisciplinary approach, relying on morphological methods, as well as aDNA and biomarkers. The integration of historical texts and laboratory methods has required considerable discussion across of network of dozens of experts.

The team has focused in on several key research topics, among these, they have sought to identify the earliest agriculture in Central Asia and to push the dates for the spread of farming in this region back in time. They have also been interested in the intensification of farming systems in the medieval period, especially with the various waves of imperial expansion and conquest. Understanding how humans mediate farming systems in the face of continual militant intervention is telling about the human narrative more broadly. The FEDD team has also focused in on studies of water-demanding crops in arid regions of Central Asia, such as cotton and rice. The team has been especially interested in knowing when humans started cultivating long-generation perennials, notably in orchards, to this end, they have rewritten the stories of the pistachio, apple, plum, and Russian olive. Central Asia was the crossroads of the ancient world and in this way, people living their played a major role in the formation of empires, cultures, and technologies through time; until recently, this part of the world has received far less attention archaeologically, but the FEDD project has made major strides in filling in these research gaps. The conclusions of this project are allowing scholars to fit Central Asia into a broader cross-cultural study of human history, cultural development, social complexity, and agricultural intensification.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

In addition to studying the processes that led humanity into the culturally modern world, a key goal of the FEDD project has been to more clearly understand the processes of domestication and dispersal of many of the foods in your kitchen. The team, in particular, focused on arboreal crops, including the rosaceous trees, such as apples and plums. Among these trees, the ancient process of domestication and formation of landraces in the Prunus group has remained the most mysterious. In fact, it had the least well understood history of all economically significant tree crops. The FEDD team has collected a large assemblage of plum pits from archaeological sites across Europe and Asia in order to conduct a geometric morphometrics study of the ancient remains, which we complemented by a population genetics analysis of the desiccated and waterlogged remains. These results have allowed us to better integrate Central Asian wild tree populations into the cross-continental domestication process and to discuss routes of dispersal for these trees across Europe. We have conducted similar investigations for apples, pistachios, and Russian olives.

The FEDD team has focused much of its time in studying the archaeobotany of Central and East Asia, a vast geographic area where these scientific methods have been nearly absant. By introducing these methods to this extensive area of the world, we are linking the routes of dispersal of crops cross across two continents. In order to achieve these goals, we collected data from archaeological excavations in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Mongolia. We also collaborated with archaeobotanical colleagues working in China to fill in the spaces in between, notably in Xinjiang, Qinghai, and Tibet (although, we did not conduct on-the-ground research in China). We complied sediment samples for processing for macrobotanical remains from archaeological contexts that span from the Terminal Pleistocene to the Mongolian Expansions, these sediment samples come from more than 200 archaeological contexts spanning 13 archaeological sites, representing more than 3,000 liters of sediment, and almost a quarter of a million individually identified archaeological remains of plant seeds and other floral parts. Collectively, this represents that largest single endeavour to clarify the spread of crops across the ancient world ever undertaken in Central Asia. The data also originate from animal bones and anthropogenic sediments from these sites.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Central Asia was one of the most important regions of the world for cultural and technological development in prehistory; however, it has received far less archaeological attention than other regions. Given the fact that some of the earliest complex political systems in the world originated in this region and later in time some of the most expansive empires of the early historical period existed within Inner Asia, this region merits a greater consideration from a comparative archaeological perspective. Further, some of the greatest levels of crop diversity for key agricultural plants has historically been maintained in this region, suggesting that a clearer understanding of the progression of agricultural intensification in this region could be beneficial for agronomic studies. Over the past five years, the FEDD team has made major strides in filling in the gaps in archaeological data for this region that have prevented a clear understanding of cultural development. Among other discoveries, the team has identified the earliest spices on the Silk Road trade routes, the earliest clear evidence for the cultivation of chickens for their eggs, the process of domestication for several of the most important crops of Europe and Asia today, and the first solid evidence of rats moving into urban centers. Members of the FEDD team will continue to carry on related research as they move into their careers, and the closing symposia for the project have also set the agendas for the field, moving forward.

Excavation Site - Bukhara, Uzbekistan