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Early integration of pastoralism and millet cultivation in Bronze Age Eurasia
Mobile pastoralists are thought to have facilitated the first trans-Eurasian dispersals of domesticated plants during the Early Bronze Age (ca 2500–2300 BC). Problematically, the earliest seeds of wheat, barley and millet in Inner Asia were recovered from human mortuary contexts and do not inform on...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
The Royal Society
2019
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6743000/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31480978 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2019.1273 |
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author | Hermes, Taylor R. Frachetti, Michael D. Doumani Dupuy, Paula N. Mar'yashev, Alexei Nebel, Almut Makarewicz, Cheryl A. |
author_facet | Hermes, Taylor R. Frachetti, Michael D. Doumani Dupuy, Paula N. Mar'yashev, Alexei Nebel, Almut Makarewicz, Cheryl A. |
author_sort | Hermes, Taylor R. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Mobile pastoralists are thought to have facilitated the first trans-Eurasian dispersals of domesticated plants during the Early Bronze Age (ca 2500–2300 BC). Problematically, the earliest seeds of wheat, barley and millet in Inner Asia were recovered from human mortuary contexts and do not inform on local cultivation or subsistence use, while contemporaneous evidence for the use and management of domesticated livestock in the region remains ambiguous. We analysed mitochondrial DNA and multi-stable isotopic ratios (δ(13)C, δ(15)N and δ(18)O) of faunal remains from key pastoralist sites in the Dzhungar Mountains of southeastern Kazakhstan. At ca 2700 BC, Near Eastern domesticated sheep and goat were present at the settlement of Dali, which were also winter foddered with the region's earliest cultivated millet spreading from its centre of domestication in northern China. In the following centuries, millet cultivation and caprine management became increasingly intertwined at the nearby site of Begash. Cattle, on the other hand, received low levels of millet fodder at the sites for millennia. By primarily examining livestock dietary intake, this study reveals that the initial transmission of millet across the mountains of Inner Asia coincided with a substantial connection between pastoralism and plant cultivation, suggesting that pastoralist livestock herding was integral for the westward dispersal of millet from farming societies in China. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6743000 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2019 |
publisher | The Royal Society |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-67430002019-09-15 Early integration of pastoralism and millet cultivation in Bronze Age Eurasia Hermes, Taylor R. Frachetti, Michael D. Doumani Dupuy, Paula N. Mar'yashev, Alexei Nebel, Almut Makarewicz, Cheryl A. Proc Biol Sci Palaeobiology Mobile pastoralists are thought to have facilitated the first trans-Eurasian dispersals of domesticated plants during the Early Bronze Age (ca 2500–2300 BC). Problematically, the earliest seeds of wheat, barley and millet in Inner Asia were recovered from human mortuary contexts and do not inform on local cultivation or subsistence use, while contemporaneous evidence for the use and management of domesticated livestock in the region remains ambiguous. We analysed mitochondrial DNA and multi-stable isotopic ratios (δ(13)C, δ(15)N and δ(18)O) of faunal remains from key pastoralist sites in the Dzhungar Mountains of southeastern Kazakhstan. At ca 2700 BC, Near Eastern domesticated sheep and goat were present at the settlement of Dali, which were also winter foddered with the region's earliest cultivated millet spreading from its centre of domestication in northern China. In the following centuries, millet cultivation and caprine management became increasingly intertwined at the nearby site of Begash. Cattle, on the other hand, received low levels of millet fodder at the sites for millennia. By primarily examining livestock dietary intake, this study reveals that the initial transmission of millet across the mountains of Inner Asia coincided with a substantial connection between pastoralism and plant cultivation, suggesting that pastoralist livestock herding was integral for the westward dispersal of millet from farming societies in China. The Royal Society 2019-09-11 2019-09-04 /pmc/articles/PMC6743000/ /pubmed/31480978 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2019.1273 Text en © 2019 The Authors. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Palaeobiology Hermes, Taylor R. Frachetti, Michael D. Doumani Dupuy, Paula N. Mar'yashev, Alexei Nebel, Almut Makarewicz, Cheryl A. Early integration of pastoralism and millet cultivation in Bronze Age Eurasia |
title | Early integration of pastoralism and millet cultivation in Bronze Age Eurasia |
title_full | Early integration of pastoralism and millet cultivation in Bronze Age Eurasia |
title_fullStr | Early integration of pastoralism and millet cultivation in Bronze Age Eurasia |
title_full_unstemmed | Early integration of pastoralism and millet cultivation in Bronze Age Eurasia |
title_short | Early integration of pastoralism and millet cultivation in Bronze Age Eurasia |
title_sort | early integration of pastoralism and millet cultivation in bronze age eurasia |
topic | Palaeobiology |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6743000/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31480978 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2019.1273 |
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