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Agriculture on the steppe

I’ve been sitting on a couple of linked press releases from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History for a few months now and it’s about time I did something about them. So here goes. The releases summarize two papers deriving from the analytical work of Dr Shevan Wilkin and her colleagues on skeletal remains previously excavated from Mongolian archaeological sites spanning a wide range of dates back to 5000 year ago.

The first paper focuses on dairy proteins from dental plaque to suggest that steppe pastoralists in what is now Mongolia started consuming ruminant milk at least 5000 years ago. Horse milk came in about 3000 years ago, coinciding with the first evidence of horse bridling and riding, and was mainly fermented. Finally, camel milk started to be consumed during the Mongol Empire, 800 years ago. How lactose intolerant populations dealt with this is still unknown, but may have involved changes in the gut microbiome.

Next, looking at the N and C isotopes in dental enamel and rib collagen enabled the researchers to investigate the wider dietscape. In particular, they found evidence of increased millet (Panicum miliaceum and/or Setaria italica) ((You can’t tell which because they’re both C4 grasses, and the method just detects the presence of C4 material in the diet.)), consumption around 2000 years ago, but only in some individuals, mainly living close to the heartland of the polity (the Xiongnu Empire) which developed at that time.

Clearly, some ancient Mongolians did not completely conform to the nomadic herder stereotype of popular imagination.

LATER: Speaking of broomcorn millet (Panicum miliaceum), here’s a paper that just came out that dates its arrival in Europe to the 16th century BC, and its rapid spread during the subsequent two centuries, i.e. during the Bronze Age. So, having been domesticated 8000 years ago in NE China, it was being widely consumed in Europe before Mongolia. And here’s one we prepared earlier…

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Brainfood: Niche modelling, Post-2020 double, CC & productivity, Wild cacao, Popcorn data, Regulations, Duplicates, Oz ag, Kenya diversity, Stressed wheat, DUS, Connectivity, Population differentiation

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Nibbles: Yunnan mushrooms, Torres Is bananas, Boxgrove, Gluten trends, Apple rootstocks, USDA horticulture job

  • There’s a sort of mycological culinary hotspot in Yunnan… Yeah, I thought that too.
  • Signs found of old banana cultivation in Australia. Well, kinda. As in not as old as in PNG, and not mainland Australia.
  • Really, really old horse butchery site in southern England excavated. When the Brits ate horses. Well, kinda.
  • New wheat is pretty much like old wheat, gluten-wise at least.
  • Breeding better apple rootstocks at USDA. A hitherto somewhat neglected aspect of apple genetic conservation and improvement.
  • Speaking of USDA, here’s another job.
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Famous British apricots abroad

So Plant Heritage tweeted a few days ago about the genera that are missing from the UK’s National Plant Collections.

The Missing Genera Campaign asks people with a passion for plants to put together a National Plant Collection of their own and join the Plant Heritage community in growing, sharing and saving plants.

One of the missing plants is the apricot, so I quickly checked on Genesys to see whether anyone else around the world has British apricots stashed away. Turns out there are two apricot varieties of British origin that are conserved in genebanks that publish their data on Genesys, a fact that I posted on Twitter too. Because, why not?

And that second one turns out to be rather special. As Plant Heritage quickly informed me, the Moor Park apricot is mentioned by Jane Austen in Mansfield Park, which was published about the time of the Battle of Waterloo.

Interestingly, the Moor Park apricot in Genesys is being conserved in Italy. But there must be other specimens in the UK, surely?

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Wanainchi wanaenda shagz

Jeremy’s latest newsletter expounds eruditely on, among other things, some recent articles on durian, Australian grasses and a heirloom pepper that we Nibbled here way too briefly. Always worth a read. Jeremy also gave me the go-ahead to reproduce here his piece on coping with Covid-19 in Kenya, which reminded me, as if I needed reminding, of what my assorted nephews and nieces are going through. Not to mention the mother-in-law. Here it is.

Deep insights from Oyunga Pala, a Kenyan currently in the Netherlands, prompted by how Covid is encouraging many Kenyans to return from the cities to small rural land holdings where they hope to create a basis for food security. Pala contrasts what he knows of small-scale agriculture in Kenya with what he is learning and what he sees all around him in the Netherlands.

Small-scale farming in Kenya accounts for 75 per cent of the total agricultural output and meets 70 per cent of the national food demand, so I know I am part of an important constituency. The challenge of my generation, those with access to land under 3 ha in size, is to craft a new farming philosophy that is built on progressive ideas through investigation, dialogue and exposure to alternative sources of knowledge grounded in the African experience. We need more philosophers and fewer technical experts to redefine what we call sustainable farming. Africa’s own knowledge systems and philosophy in agriculture are held in the memory of a generation that is dying out and dismissed as backward. Yet my grandmother’s practices resonate with those of emerging natural farming systems around the world that espouse new ideas grounded in the environmental, social and historical realities of the non-western world.

Seems to me to echo what other people are saying about AGRA, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa.

Well worth your time, as are the articles Pala links to. I know nothing about Elephant, the online publication, but it looks like a good source of interesting news.