- Useful roundup of the application of modern analytical techniques to archaeological food residues.
- Medieval “greek wine” was not greek wine. No modern analytical techniques used.
- Phoenicians traded wine. Some modern analytical techniques used.
Nibbles: Genebanks in Brazil, Tunisia, Ghana, Ethiopia, Goan rice, Wheat adoption, Peruvian hot peppers & cacao, Amazonian fruits and nuts, Dates, Great Hedge of India, Conservation genetics presentation
- Safety duplicating a chickpea collection.
- Tunisia’s genebank in the news.
- Ghana’s genebank trying to save taro.
- Using a genebank to improve Elephant grass.
- On-farm conservation of rice in Goa.
- Molecular tools show that a couple of varieties account for about half the wheat acreage in Bangladesh and Nepal. Hope all the landraces are in genebanks, and safety duplicated.
- Celebrating Peruvian pepper diversity.
- Peru’s cacao diversity doesn’t need help, apparently.
- However, the Amazon’s wild-extracted fruits (including cacao and a wild relative) could be in trouble. Hope they’re in genebanks, just in case.
- How the date came to the US. Including its genebanks.
- India had a precursor of the Green Wall of Africa but nobody remembers it. Glad it wasn’t used as a genebank of sorts.
- Conservation genetics (i.e., most of the above) explained in 48 slides.
Nibbles: Missouri wine, Ancient Chinese beer, UNFSS, Biodiversity & agriculture & diets, Container genebank
- Missouri has been important to wine. Very important.
- And China to beer.
- 7 things that are important for future food systems. Spoiler alert: diversity underpins all 7.
- Why biodiversity is important to diets. And vice versa.
- Why biodiversity is important to agriculture. And vice versa.
- No worries, now anyone can have a genebank.
Nibbles: New Roots for Restoration Biology Integration Institute, Olive genebanks, Saving old grapevines
- New institute to restore ecosystems, including agricultural ones, gets money.
- Some olive-based ecosystems certainly need restoration, good thing there are genebanks.
- Sometimes, restoring ecosystems means digging up old grapevines and moving them down the road.
Did millet cause the Black Death?
The latest episode of the wonderful Ottoman History Podcast is about the Black Death. Or, rather, the Black Deaths. It’s an interview with Dr Monica H. Green, an historian of medicine specializing on the medieval period, who has brought together textual, archaeological and genetic evidence to question the dominant, Eurocentric — she calls it Boccaccian — narrative of the plague.
As she explains, prior outbreaks of plague in 13th-century Asia occurred at the edges of the ascendant Mongol Empire, roughly a century before the plague arrived in Western Europe. In our conversation, we learn how Green uncovered the new story of the “four Black Deaths” and in doing so, explore the historiography of the Black Death and how genetics, archaeology, and a fresh approach to textual sources have brought us to a deeper understand of one of history’s deadliest pandemics.
What’s this got to do with agrobiodiversity? Well, Dr Green summarized her findings in a tweet back in December (slightly modified for clarity):
- the Black Death started in the 13th, not the 14th Century
- it wasn’t just a Mediterranean or European phenomenon
- it originated with a spillover out of the marmot plagues reservoir in the Tian Shan mountains, leading to a Big Bang expansion in four directions
- it likely spread through the Mongol Empire via grain supplies
Whoa, grain supplies? Apparently.
In the foothills of the Tian Shan mountains, Mongol supply chains gathered up grain to feed their campaigning troops, particularly a kind of millet unique to the region. Sacks of grain were then transported to the fortresses and cities where the Mongols laid their greatest sieges between the 1210s and the 1250s, as far distant as Kaifeng in China and Baghdad in Persia. Something so insignificant as a few sacks of millet, into which a few plague-infected rodents crawled, might account for the worst scenes of human suffering the world has witnessed.
So much for that particular superfood. Whichever millet it is.