Yang, X. and Wu, W. and Perry, L. and Ma, Z. and etl, .
(2018)
Critical role of climate change in plant selection and millet domestication in North China.
Scientific Reports, 8.
pp. 1-9.
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Abstract
While North China is one of the earliest independent centers for cereal domestication in the world,
the earliest stages of the long process of agricultural origins remain unclear. While only millets were
eventually domesticated in early sedentary societies there, recent archaeobotanical evidence reported
here indicates that grasses from the Paniceae (including millets) and Triticeae tribes were exploited
together by foraging groups from the Last Glacial Maximum to the mid-Holocene. Here we explore
how and why millets were selected for domestication while Triticeae were abandoned. We document
the different exploitation and cultivation trajectories of the two tribes employing ancient starch data
derived from nine archaeological sites dating from 25,000 to 5500 cal BP (LGM through mid-Holocene)
in North China. With this diachronic overview, we can place the trajectories into the context of
paleoclimatic reconstructions for this period. Entering the Holocene, climatic changes increased the
yield stability, abundance, and availability of the wild progenitors of millets, with growing conditions
increasingly favoring millets while becoming more unfavorable for grasses of the Triticeae tribe. We thus
hypothesize that climate change played a critical role in the selection of millet species for domestication
in North China, with early domestication evidenced by 8700 cal BP.
| Item Type: |
Article
|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: |
Domesticated, Millets, Cereal,Climate,North China |
| Author Affiliation: |
Key Lab. of Land Surface Pattern and Simulation, Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources
Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China |
| Subjects: |
Atmosperic Science > Climatology |
| Divisions: |
Millet |
| Depositing User: |
Mr T L Gautham
|
| Date Deposited: |
26 Nov 2018 05:08 |
| Last Modified: |
26 Nov 2018 05:08 |
| URI: |
http://eprints.icrisat.ac.in/id/eprint/15702 |
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