The early adoption of East Asian crops in West Asia: rice and broomcorn millet in northern Iran

作者：Yunshi Huang, Zhenhua Deng, Hassan Fazeli Nashli, Dorian Q. Fuller, Xiaohong Wu, Mojtaba Safari · 发表于：Antiquity · 年份：2023 · DOI：10.15184/aqy.2023.42 · 被引用次数：17 · 研究领域：Archaeology and ancient environmental studies、Pacific and Southeast Asian Studies、Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology

Following their early domestication, broomcorn millet and rice (in East Asia) and wheat and barley (in South-west Asia) were subsequently adopted across Eurasia during the Bronze Age/early historic period. The precise timing and dispersal routes for this trans-Eurasian exchange, however, remain unclear. Here, the authors present archaeobotanical evidence from sites on the Caspian Sea's southern coast, demonstrating that broomcorn millet reached West Asia by c . 2050 BC and rice by c . 120 BC. These dispersals relate to two waves of globalisation and were based on two different mechanisms: an ‘infiltration’ model (broomcorn millet) and a ‘leapfrog’ model (rice). The results contribute to our understanding of the continental-scale connectivity of the late prehistoric/early historic periods.