Unprecedented yet gradual nature of first millennium CE intercontinental crop plant dispersal revealed in ancient Negev desert refuse

  1. Daniel Fuks  Is a corresponding author
  2. Yoel Melamed
  3. Dafna Langgut
  4. Tali Erickson-Gini
  5. Yotam Tepper
  6. Guy Bar-Oz  Is a corresponding author
  7. Ehud Weiss  Is a corresponding author
  1. University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
  2. Bar-Ilan University, Israel
  3. Tel Aviv University, Israel
  4. Israel Antiquities Authority, Israel
  5. University of Haifa, Israel

Abstract

Global agro-biodiversity has resulted from processes of plant migration and agricultural adoption. Although critically affecting current diversity, crop diffusion from Classical antiquity to the Middle Ages is poorly researched, overshadowed by studies on that of prehistoric periods. A new archaeobotanical dataset from three Negev Highland desert sites demonstrates the first millennium CE&'s significance for long-term agricultural change in southwest Asia. This enables evaluation of the 'Islamic Green Revolution' (IGR) thesis compared to 'Roman Agricultural Diffusion' (RAD), and both versus crop diffusion during and since the Neolithic. Among the finds, some of the earliest aubergine (Solanum melongena) seeds in the Levant represent the proposed IGR. Several other identified economic plants, including two unprecedented in Levantine archaeobotany-jujube (Ziziphus jujuba/mauritiana) and white lupine (Lupinus albus)-implicate RAD as the greater force for crop migrations. Altogether the evidence supports a gradualist model for Holocene-wide crop diffusion, within which the first millennium CE contributed more to global agricultural diversity than any earlier period.

Data availability

Only identified plant taxa are reported in the results of this study and all relevant data are included in the manuscript and supplementary materials. Source data may be found in Table 4-Source data 1-3.

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Daniel Fuks

    Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom
    For correspondence
    df427@cam.ac.uk
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-4686-6128
  2. Yoel Melamed

    Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-0952-708X
  3. Dafna Langgut

    Laboratory of Archaeobotany and Ancient Environments, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  4. Tali Erickson-Gini

    Southern Region, Israel Antiquities Authority, Omer, Israel
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  5. Yotam Tepper

    Central Region, Israel Antiquities Authority, Shoham, Israel
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  6. Guy Bar-Oz

    School of Archaeology and Maritime Cultures, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel
    For correspondence
    guybar@research.haifa.ac.il
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-1009-5619
  7. Ehud Weiss

    Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel
    For correspondence
    ehud.weiss@biu.ac.il
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-9730-4726

Funding

Bar-Ilan University

  • Daniel Fuks

Israel Council for Higher Education

  • Daniel Fuks

Molcho fund

  • Daniel Fuks

Horizon 2020 Framework Programme

  • Guy Bar-Oz

Israel Science Foundation

  • Guy Bar-Oz

Horizon 2020 Framework Programme

  • Daniel Fuks

British Academy

  • Daniel Fuks

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Copyright

© 2023, Fuks et al.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.

Metrics

  • 504
    views
  • 97
    downloads
  • 5
    citations

Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.

Download links

A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.

Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)

Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)

Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)

  1. Daniel Fuks
  2. Yoel Melamed
  3. Dafna Langgut
  4. Tali Erickson-Gini
  5. Yotam Tepper
  6. Guy Bar-Oz
  7. Ehud Weiss
(2023)
Unprecedented yet gradual nature of first millennium CE intercontinental crop plant dispersal revealed in ancient Negev desert refuse
eLife 12:e85118.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.85118

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.85118

Further reading

    1. Ecology
    Astrid Katharina Maria Stubbusch, Johannes M Keegstra ... Glen G D'Souza
    Research Article

    Most of Earth’s biomass is composed of polysaccharides. During biomass decomposition, polysaccharides are degraded by heterotrophic bacteria as a nutrient and energy source and are thereby partly remineralized into CO2. As polysaccharides are heterogeneously distributed in nature, following the colonization and degradation of a polysaccharide hotspot the cells need to reach new polysaccharide hotspots. Even though many studies indicate that these degradation-dispersal cycles contribute to the carbon flow in marine systems, we know little about how cells alternate between polysaccharide degradation and motility, and which environmental factors trigger this behavioral switch. Here, we studied the growth of the marine bacterium Vibrio cyclitrophicus ZF270 on the abundant marine polysaccharide alginate, both in its soluble polymeric form as well as on its breakdown products. We used microfluidics coupled to time-lapse microscopy to analyze motility and growth of individual cells, and RNA sequencing to study associated changes in gene expression. We found that single cells grow at reduced rate on alginate until they form large groups that cooperatively break down the polymer. Exposing cell groups to digested alginate accelerates cell growth and changes the expression of genes involved in alginate degradation and catabolism, central metabolism, ribosomal biosynthesis, and transport. However, exposure to digested alginate also triggers cells to become motile and disperse from cell groups, proportionally increasing with the group size before the nutrient switch, and this is accompanied by high expression of genes involved in flagellar assembly, chemotaxis, and quorum sensing. The motile cells chemotax toward polymeric but not digested alginate, likely enabling them to find new polysaccharide hotspots. Overall, our findings reveal cellular mechanisms that might also underlie bacterial degradation-dispersal cycles, which influence the remineralization of biomass in marine environments.

    1. Ecology
    Viraj R Torsekar, Nevo Sagi ... Dror Hawlena
    Research Article

    Litter decomposition is expected to be positively associated with precipitation despite evidence that decomposers of varying sizes have different moisture dependencies. We hypothesized that higher tolerance of macro-decomposers to aridity may counterbalance the effect of smaller decomposers, leading to similar decomposition rates across climatic gradients. We tested this hypothesis by placing plant litter baskets of different mesh sizes in seven sites along a sharp precipitation gradient, and by characterizing the macro-decomposer assemblages using pitfall trapping. We found that decomposers responded differently to precipitation levels based on their size. Microbial decomposition increased with precipitation in the winter while macro-decomposition peaked in arid sites during the summer. This led to similar overall decomposition rates across the gradient except in hyper-arid sites. Macro-decomposer richness, abundance, and biomass peaked in arid environments. Our findings highlight the importance of macro-decomposition in arid-lands, possibly resolving the dryland decomposition conundrum, and emphasizing the need to contemplate decomposer size when investigating zoogeochemical processes.