Surprising global origins for regional food favourites

Italy's tomatoes and Thailand's potent chillies, although closely associated with these nations, originate from elsewhere, a study shows.

The assessment of more that 150 key food crops shows how agriculture and diets rely on crops from other regions.

The authors say the results highlight the interdependence of food systems and the need for a united effort to ensure its resilience to future threats.

The findings appear in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

The research by an international team of scientists assessed the diet and crop production of 177 counties, which accounted for 98% of the world's population.

Growing understanding

"For probably a hundred years or so, scientists have been bringing together information to know where crops came from, where they were domesticated by diverse agricultural cultures," said co-author Colin Khoury, a crop diversity specialist from the Colombia-based International Center for Tropical Agriculture.

"It has taken a lot of information to come together, including linguistics, genetics and archaeological data, in order to reach this level of understanding."

Dr Khoury said a major figure in the understanding of where our food came from was a Russian scientist called Nikolai Vavilov, "a character that would make Indiana Jones look like a bit of a wimp". He was jailed on numerous occasions by warlords during his expeditions across five continents.

The information Vavilov gathered during his travels allowed him to record the diversity of a wide range of crops, and where the plants were growing alongside their wild relatives.

This led to him proposing "centres of origin" for food crops, which included Central America, South America, the Mediterranean and the Near East, explained Dr Khoury.

Since then, scientists have debated and built upon this body of work, with "centres of diversity" replacing Vavilov's "centres of origin" hypothesis.

"A century later, people are still arguing about where exactly the crops come from but we know pretty well the regions where the diversity is richest," he added.

"This is important now for agriculture because that diversity is still used to breed pest and disease resistance, climate change tolerance and all kinds of other things."

Food web

Dr Khoury said his team's study was the first to look at where all the crops came from and to ask which areas where important in terms of modern food systems.

The team identified 23 food-producing regions, all of which were deemed to be important, highlighting the global interdependence of the food crops.

"The connections between where people grow and eat food and where they come from are incredibly extensive, nations generally connect to so many different regions around the world."

Dr Khoury said the findings - as well as confirming the importance of regions, such as the Near East, which were long believed to be key hubs for the origins of food crops - also highlighted that other regions were equally important, such as North America and West Africa.

Another main finding was that no country's diet consisted wholly of native food crops.

As the global food system is projected to come under increasing pressure from a rising human population and climate change, the findings also pointed to the need for an interconnected effort to ensure food production's resilience to future threats.

"It is very clear in science that genetic diversity is the biological base for being able to survive and adapt," Dr Khoury observed.

"So if I am a plant breeder and I want potatoes to be resistant to a new pest in Europe, where do I find that diversity? The quick answer is where the diversity is most diverse, where there is the most variation.

"The argument is that where the potatoes have been the longest, where they have spent hundreds or thousands of years being in contact with different pests, diseases and climates - they are going to be the most diverse.

"These are areas we call primary regions of diversity. It is not just the crops; it is also their wild and weedy cousins.

"The reality is that the diversity is out there in the wild but it is not very well collected, especially when it comes to the wild relatives."

As for the origins of Italy's tomatoes and Thailand's chilli's? "Both of those crops are from the new world, from the Americas. It was only after what is called the Columbian exchange," Dr Khoury explained.

This was the period following Christopher Columbus's 1492 arrival in South America that saw the transfer of animals, plants, culture and technology between Europe and southern America.

"They saw these crops and brought them back to Europe. It is surprising how quickly new foods were accepted and adopted as their own by cultures."
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Reference:

Kinver, Mark. 2016. “Surprising global origins for regional food favourites”. BBC News. Posted: June 8, 2016. Available online: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-36471362

Japan's oldest basil pollen found in Nara ruins may have been 'medicine' from China

Basil pollen from the time of the legendary shaman queen Himiko has been discovered at the site that might once have been her home.

The basil, the oldest found in Japan, dates back more than 1,500 years and originated in the tropics of Southeast Asia, archaeologists announced May 13.

It was found in the Makimuku ruins which date back to the early third and fourth centuries.

"Basil of Southeast Asian origin could have been brought here as dried medicinal herbs through exchanges with the Chinese," said Masaaki Kanehara, a professor of archaeology at Nara University of Education.

The ruins, a national historic site, are believed to have once been home to the ancient kingdom of Yamataikoku that was ruled by Himiko.

The exact location of the kingdom has long been a topic of academic debate.

The find was announced in an article published by Kanehara and his wife, Masako, who is also an environmental archaeologist, in a bulletin of the Research Center for Makimukugaku.

The pollen was discovered during a dig conducted in 1991 in a ditch measuring 1.5 meters wide and 1 meter deep, located about 50 meters south of a "kofun" in the ruins. A kofun is a huge burial mound of a high-ranking figure in ancient Japan and the Makimuku Ishizuka Kofun is believed to have been built in the early or mid third century.

Realizing several years ago that the discovered pollen resembled that of the basil plant, the couple planted about 10 kinds of basil last year. After comparing different kinds of basil pollen, the two concluded that the pollen found in the ruins likely came from a strain originating in Southeast Asia.

As only a tiny amount was discovered, it is believed that basil was not cultivated in the area. In addition, the deteriorated colors of the specimen suggests that it is not pollen from a newer era that slipped into the ruins at a later date.

Basil, a herb belonging to the mint family, boasts more than 40 species that originated in India and Southeast Asia.

The strong-scented kind used in Italian cuisine was introduced into Europe from India. In China, basil became an ingredient for medicine, and was ingested in the belief it improved blood flow. In the Edo Period (1603-1867), the seeds of the plant, which become gelatinous when soaked in water, were used as eyewash in Japan.

According to the Gishiwajinden (Biography of the Wa people) chronicle in "Wei Zhi," the official history book of the Wei Dynasty, a number of Chinese missions were sent to Japan in the mid-third century via the Korean Peninsula.
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Reference:

Tsukaoto, Kazuto. 2015. “Japan's oldest basil pollen found in Nara ruins may have been 'medicine' from China”. The Asahi Shimbun. Posted: May 14, 2015. Available online: http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/social_affairs/AJ201505140060

Evidence of Pre-Columbus Trade Found in Alaska House

Bronze artifacts discovered in a 1,000-year-old house in Alaska suggest trade was occurring between East Asia and the New World centuries before the voyages of Columbus.

Archaeologists found the artifacts at the "Rising Whale" site at Cape Espenberg.

"When you're looking at the site from a little ways away, it looks like a bowhead [whale] coming to the surface," said Owen Mason, a research associate at the University of Colorado, who is part of a team excavating the site.

The new discoveries, combined with other finds made over the past 100 years, suggest trade items and ideas were reaching Alaska from East Asian civilizations well before Christopher Columbus arrived in the Caribbean Sea in 1492 archaeologists said.

"We're seeing the interactions, indirect as they are, with these so-called 'high civilizations' of China, Korea or Yakutia," a region in Russia, Mason said.

Bronze and obsidian

The Rising Whale discoveries include two bronze artifacts, one of which may have originally been used as a buckle or fastener. It has a piece of leather on it that radiocarbon dates to around A.D. 600 (more tests will take place in the future). The other bronze artifact may have been used as a whistle.

Bronze-working had not been developed at this time in Alaska, so archaeologists think the artifacts would have been manufactured inChina, Korea or Yakutia, and made their way to Alaska through trade routes.

Also inside that house, researchers found the remains of obsidian artifacts, which have a chemical signature that indicates the obsidian is from the Anadyr River valley in Russia.

Trade routes

The recent discoveries at the Rising Whale site add to over a century of research that indicates trade routes connected the Bering Strait (including the Alaskan side) with the civilizations that flourished in East Asia before Columbus' time.

In 1913, anthropologist Berthold Laufer published an analysis of texts and artifacts in the journal T'oung Pao in which he found that the Chinese had a great interest in obtaining ivory from narwhals and walruses, acquiring it from people who lived to the northeast of China. Some of the walrus ivory may have come from the Bering Strait, where the animals are found in abundance.

Additionally, a number of researchers have noted similarities in design between the plate armor worn by people in Alaska and that worn in China, Korea, Japan and eastern Mongolia.

For instance, in the 1930s, Smithsonian Institution archaeologist Henry Collins undertook excavations at St. Lawrence Island, off the west coast of Alaska. In his book "The Archaeology of St. Lawrence Island" (Smithsonian, 1937), he wrote that plate armor started appearing on the island around 1,000 years ago. It consisted of overlapping plates made of ivory, bones and sometimes iron.

Plate armor similar to this was developed in several areas of East Asia, including Manchuria (in China), eastern Mongolia and Japan, Collins wrote. The use of plate armor, he said, spread north from these areas, and was eventually introduced to Alaska from across the Bering Strait.

Genetic evidence

Recent genetic research also sheds light on interactions between people from East Asia and the New World. Many scientists say that humans first arrived in the New World around 15,000 years ago by crossing a land bridge that had formed across the Bering Strait. This land bridge was flooded about 10,000 years ago.

However, a recent genetic study suggests there were also movements of people from East Asia to the New World at a later date. Those who lived at the Rising Whale site may be part of what scientists refer to as the "Birnirk" culture, a group of people who lived on both sides of the Bering Strait and used sophisticated skin boats and harpoons to hunt whales.

The genetic study indicates that people from the Birnirk culture are the ancestors of a people called the "Thule," who spread out across the North American arctic as far as Greenland. The Thule, in turn, are ancestors of the modern-day Inuit.

Long before Columbus

The Bering Strait wasn't the only area where interactions between people from the Old World and New World occurred before Columbus' arrival. By 1,000 years ago, the Vikings had explored parts of Canadaand had even established a short-lived settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland.

Research also indicates that, around this time, the Polynesians had reached South America, bringing sweet potatoes back to Polynesia and possibly bringing chickens to South America.

Many other hypotheses have been put forward suggesting that people reached the New World before Columbus. One idea that has received a lot of attention in popular media is that Chinese mariners sailed directly to the New World, although this idea lacks scholarly support.

Mason and his team will present their research on the Rising Whale site at the Canadian Archaeological Association annual meeting in St. John's Newfoundland, Canada, between April 28 and May 2.
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Reference:

Jarus, Owen. 2015. “Evidence of Pre-Columbus Trade Found in Alaska House”. Live Science. Posted: April 16, 2015. Available online: http://www.livescience.com/50506-artifacts-reveal-pre-columbus-trade.html

Medieval slave trade routes in Eastern Europe extended from Finland and the Baltic Countries to Asia

The routes of slave trade in Eastern Europe in the medieval and pre-modern period extended all the way to the Caspian Sea and Central Asia. A recent study completed at the University of Eastern Finland suggests that persons captured during raids into areas which today constitute parts of Finland, the Russian Karelia and the Baltic Countries ended up being sold on these remote trade routes. There was a particular demand for blonde girls and boys who were seen as exotic luxury items, and it was financially beneficial to transport them to the far-away markets. The study by Professor Jukka Korpela was published as a General Article in Russian History (1/2014), which is a leading journal addressing the history of Russia. The journal publishes only four peer-reviewed General Articles per year. The numbers of northern people who finally reached the southern markets were not large. The study indicates that out of the thousands of persons kidnapped in the north, only a few hundred – at most – ended up in the Caspian Sea region and Central Asia via the Volgan and Crimean slave markets. Otherwise, slave trade in the Crimea and Volga regions was extensive, and tens of thousands of people were sold into slavery every year. However, the existence of the trade route shows that it was possible, even under primitive conditions, to distribute information about the demand for blonde girls in the far-away markets. The network of those involved in slave trade included men who participated in raids, slave traders and customers representing the leading class of society. Raids into the north were launched especially from Novgorod, which was well connected to the Crimea and, from there on, to the Caspian Sea and the slave markets of Central Asia. Raids were done by private warlords and princely troops, and they extended all the way to the coasts of the Gulf of Bothnia and Lapland. The material used in the study consists of chronicles, travelogues and various administrative documents such as tax and land registers, as well as diplomatic reports. Slave trade in Eastern Europe gradually faded, as the control exercised by the emerging structure of European states became stronger. The spreading of Christianity also caused a decline in slave trade during the medieval period. Slave trade within Europe declined already in the early medieval period, but in regions bordering on Islamic countries, slave trade continued up until the pre-modern period.
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References:

EurekAlert. 2014. “Medieval slave trade routes in Eastern Europe extended from Finland and the Baltic Countries to Asia”. EurekAlert. Posted: April 16, 2014. Available online: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-04/uoef-mst041514.php

Scientists found a 600-year-old coin from China on the Kenyan island of Manda that proves China and East Africa traded decades before European explorers set sail to east Africa, effectively rewriting the history of international trading, according to reports.

A joint expedition of scientists led by Dr. Chapurukha Kusimba of The Field Museum and Sloan Williams of the University of Illinois at Chicago found the 600-year-old Chinese coin, a small disk of copper and silver with a square hole in the center so it could be worn on a belt. He said it was issued by Emperor Yongle of China who reigned from 1403 to 1425 during the Ming Dynasty. Yongle, who began construction of China's Forbidden City, was interested in political and trade missions to East Africa and sent Admiral Zheng He, also known as Cheng Ho, to explore its shores.

"Zheng He was, in many ways, the Christopher Columbus of China," said Kusimba, Curator of African Anthropology at The Field Museum. "It's wonderful to have a coin that may ultimately prove he came to Kenya."

"This finding is significant. We know Africa has always been connected to the rest of the world, but this coin opens a discussion about the relationship between China and Indian Ocean nations," Kusimba added.

That relationship between China and East Africa ceased soon after Yongle's death when successive Chinese rulers banned foreign expeditions, which paved the way for European explorers to dominate the Age of Discovery and expand their countries' empires. While the Portuguese were the first Europeans to explore current-day Kenya with Vasco da Gama having visited Mombasa, a key port for ivory, in 1498, modern European exploration of Kenya didn't start until 1844 when two German missionaries, Johan Ludwig Krapf and Joahnnes Rebmann came in an attempt to introduce Christianity.

The island of Manda, off the Kenyan northern coast, was home to an advanced civilization from about 200AD to 1430AD, when it was abandoned and never inhabited again. Nevertheless, trade played an important role in the island's development, something the 600-year-old coin found may show.

Scientists from Kenya, Pennsylvania and Ohio also participated in the expedition, finding human remains and other artifacts predating the coin.
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References:

Van Hoven, Jason. 2013. "600-Year-Old Coin Found: Finding Proves China, East Africa Traded Before Europe Explored". International Science Times. Posted: March 14, 2013. Available online: http://www.isciencetimes.com/articles/4697/20130314/600-year-old-coin-found-china-manda.htm

Deep History of Coconuts Decoded: Origins of Cultivation, Ancient Trade Routes, and Colonization of the Americas

he coconut (the fruit of the palm Cocos nucifera) is the Swiss Army knife of the plant kingdom; in one neat package it provides a high-calorie food, potable water, fiber that can be spun into rope, and a hard shell that can be turned into charcoal. What's more, until it is needed for some other purpose it serves as a handy flotation device.



No wonder people from ancient Austronesians to Captain Bligh pitched a few coconuts aboard before setting sail. (The mutiny of the Bounty is supposed to have been triggered by Bligh's harsh punishment of the theft of coconuts from the ship's store.)

So extensively is the history of the coconut interwoven with the history of people traveling that Kenneth Olsen, a plant evolutionary biologist, didn't expect to find much geographical structure to coconut genetics when he and his colleagues set out to examine the DNA of more than 1300 coconuts from all over the world.

"I thought it would be mostly a mish-mash," he says, thoroughly homogenized by humans schlepping coconuts with them on their travels.

He was in for a surprise. It turned out that there are two clearly differentiated populations of coconuts, a finding that strongly suggests the coconut was brought under cultivation in two separate locations, one in the Pacific basin and the other in the Indian Ocean basin. What's more, coconut genetics also preserve a record of prehistoric trade routes and of the colonization of the Americas.

The discoveries of the team, which included Bee Gunn, now of the Australian National University in Australia, and Luc Baudouin of the Centre International de Recherches en Agronomie pour le Développement (CIRAD) in Montpellier, France, as well as Olsen, associate professor of biology at Washington University in St. Louis, are described in the June 23 online issue of the journal PLoS ONE.

Morphology a red herring

Before the DNA era, biologists recognized a domesticated plant by its morphology. In the case of grains, for example, one of the most important traits in domestication is the loss of shattering, or the tendency of seeds to break off the central grain stalk once mature.

The trouble was it was hard to translate coconut morphology into a plausible evolutionary history.

There are two distinctively different forms of the coconut fruit, known as niu kafa and niu vai, Samoan names for traditional Polynesian varieties. The niu kafa form is triangular and oblong with a large fibrous husk. The niu vai form is rounded and contains abundant sweet coconut "water" when unripe.

"Quite often the niu vai fruit are brightly colored when they're unripe, either bright green, or bright yellow. Sometimes they're a beautiful gold with reddish tones," says Olsen.

Coconuts have also been traditionally classified into tall and dwarf varieties based on the tree "habit," or shape. Most coconuts are talls, but there are also dwarfs that are only several feet tall when they begin reproducing. The dwarfs account for only 5 percent of coconuts.

Dwarfs tend to be used for "eating fresh," and the tall forms for coconut oil and for fiber.

"Almost all the dwarfs are self fertilizing and those three traits -- being dwarf, having the rounded sweet fruit, and being self-pollinating -- are thought to be the definitive domestication traits," says Olsen.

"The traditional argument was that the niu kafa form was the wild, ancestral form that didn't reflect human selection, in part because it was better adapted to ocean dispersal," says Olsen. Dwarf trees with niu vai fruits were thought to be the domesticated form.

The trouble is it's messier than that. "You almost always find coconuts near human habitations," says Olsen, and "while the niu vai is an obvious domestication form, the niu kafa form is also heavily exploited for copra (the dried meat ground and pressed to make oil) and coir (fiber woven into rope)."

"The lack of universal domestication traits together with the long history of human interaction with coconuts, made it difficult to trace the coconut's cultivation origins strictly by morphology," Olsen says.

DNA was a different story.

Collecting coconut DNA

The project got started when Gunn, who had long been interested in palm evolution, and who was then at the Missouri Botanical Garden, contacted Olsen, who had the laboratory facilities needed to study palm DNA.

Together they won a National Geographic Society grant that allowed Gunn to collect coconut DNA in regions of the western Indian Ocean for which there were no data. The snippets of leaf tissue from the center of the coconut tree's crown she sent home in zip-lock bags to be analyzed.

"We had reason to suspect that coconuts from these regions -- especially Madagascar and the Comoros Islands -- might show evidence of ancient 'gene flow' events brought about by ancient Austronesians setting up migration routes and trade routes across the southern Indian Ocean," Olsen says.

Olsen's lab genotyped 10 microsatellite regions in each palm sample. Microsatellites are regions of stuttering DNA where the same few nucleotide units are repeated many times. Mutations pop up and persist pretty easily in these regions because they usually don't affect traits that are important to survival and so aren't selected against, says Olsen. "So we can use these genetic markers to 'fingerprint' the coconut," he says.

The new collections were combined with a vast dataset that had been established by CIRAD, a French agricultural research center, using the same genetic markers. "These data were being used for things like breeding, but no one had gone through and systematically examined the genetic variation in the context of the history of the plant," Olsen says.

Two origins of cultivation

The most striking finding of the new DNA analysis is that the Pacific and Indian Ocean coconuts are quite distinct genetically. "About a third of the total genetic diversity can be partitioned between two groups that correspond to the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean," says Olsen.

"That's a very high level of differentiation within a single species and provides pretty conclusive evidence that there were two origins of cultivation of the coconut," he says.

In the Pacific, coconuts were likely first cultivated in island Southeast Asia, meaning the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, and perhaps the continent as well. In the Indian Ocean the likely center of cultivation was the southern periphery of India, including Sri Lanka, the Maldives, and the Laccadives.

The definitive domestication traits -- the dwarf habit, self-pollination and niu vai fruits -- arose only in the Pacific, however, and then only in a small subset of Pacific coconuts, which is why Olsen speaks of origins of cultivation rather than of domestication.

"At least we have it easier than scientists who study animal domestication," he says. "So much of being a domesticated animal is being tame, and behavioral traits aren't preserved in the archeological record."

Did it float or was it carried?

One exception to the general Pacific/Indian Ocean split is the western Indian Ocean, specifically Madagascar and the Comoros Islands, where Gunn had collected. The coconuts there are a genetic mixture of the Indian Ocean type and the Pacific type.

Olsen and his colleagues believe the Pacific coconuts were introduced to the Indian Ocean a couple of thousand years ago by ancient Austronesians establishing trade routes connecting Southeast Asia to Madagascar and coastal east Africa.

Olsen points out that no genetic admixture is found in the more northerly Seychelles, which fall outside the trade route. He adds that a recent study of rice varieties found in Madagascar shows there is a similar mixing of the japonica and indica rice varieties from Southeast Asia and India.

To add to the historical shiver, the descendants of the people who brought the coconuts and rice are still living in Madagascar. The present-day inhabitants of the Madagascar highlands are descendants of the ancient Austronesians, Olsen says.

Much later the Indian Ocean coconut was transported to the New World by Europeans. The Portuguese carried coconuts from the Indian Ocean to the West Coast of Africa, Olsen says, and the plantations established there were a source of material that made it into the Caribbean and also to coastal Brazil.

So the coconuts that you find today in Florida are largely the Indian ocean type, Olsen says, which is why they tend to have the niu kafa form.

On the Pacific side of the New World tropics, however, the coconuts are Pacific Ocean coconuts. Some appear to have been transported there in pre-Columbian times by ancient Austronesians moving east rather than west.

During the colonial period, the Spanish brought coconuts to the Pacific coast of Mexico from the Philippines, which was for a time governed on behalf of the King of Spain from Mexico.

This is why, Olsen says, you find Pacific type coconuts on the Pacific coast of Central America and Indian type coconuts on the Atlantic coast.

"The big surprise was that there was so much genetic differentiation clearly correlated with geography, even though humans have been moving coconut around for so long."

Far from being a mish-mash, coconut DNA preserves a record of human cultivation, voyages of exploration, trade and colonization.
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References:

2011. "Deep History of Coconuts Decoded: Origins of Cultivation, Ancient Trade Routes, and Colonization of the Americas". Science Daily. Posted: June 24, 2011. Available online: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110624142037.htm