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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. Keywords: Eurasia, Silk Route, Panicum miliaceum, Oryza sativa, Triticum timopheevii, agriculture, crop dispersal, Introduction The transmission and exchange of innovations such as domesticated species, metallurgical technologies and prestige goods have played a significant role in human history, contributing to diverse local trajectories of [...]

Rice (Oryza sativa) is one of the world's most important food crops, and is comprised largely of japonica and indica subspecies. Here, we reconstruct the history of rice dispersal in Asia using whole-genome sequences of more than 1,400 landraces, coupled with geographic, environmental, archaeobotanical and paleoclimate data. Originating around 9,000 yr ago in the Yangtze Valley, rice diversified into temperate and tropical japonica rice during a global cooling event about 4,200 yr ago. Soon after, tropical japonica rice reached Southeast Asia, where it rapidly diversified, starting about 2,500 yr BP. The history of indica rice dispersal appears more complicated, moving into China around 2,000 yr BP. We also identify extrinsic factors that influence genome diversity, with temperature being a leading abiotic factor. Reconstructing the dispersal history of rice and its climatic correlates may help identify genetic adaptations associated with the spread of a key domesticated species.

The reasons and processes that led hunter-gatherers to transition into a sedentary and agricultural way of life are a fundamental unresolved question of human history. Here we present results of excavations of two single-occupation early Neolithic sites (dated to 7.9 and 7.4 ka) and two high-resolution archaeological surveys in northeast China, which capture the earliest stages of sedentism and millet cultivation in the second oldest center of domestication in the Old World. The transition to sedentism coincided with a significant transition to wetter conditions in north China, at 8.1-7.9 ka. We suggest that these wetter conditions were an empirical precondition that facilitated the complex transitional process to sedentism and eventually millet domestication in north China. Interestingly, sedentism and plant domestication followed different trajectories. The sedentary way of life and cultural norms evolved rapidly, within a few hundred years, we find complex sedentary villages inhabiting the landscape. However, the process of plant domestication, progressed slowly over several millennia. Our earliest evidence for the beginning of the domestication process appear in the context of an already complex sedentary village (late Xinglongwa culture), a half millennia after the onset of cultivation, and even in this phase domesticated plants and animals were rare, suggesting that the transition to domesticated (sensu stricto) plants in affluent areas might have not played a substantial role in the transition to sedentary societies.

Established chronologies indicate a long-term 'Hoabinhian' hunter-gatherer occupation of Mainland Southeast Asia during the Terminal Pleistocene to Mid-Holocene (45 000-3000 years ago). Here, the authors re-examine the 'Hoabinhian' sequence from north-west Thailand using new radiocarbon and luminescence data from Spirit Cave, Steep Cliff Cave and Banyan Valley Cave. The results indicate that hunter-gatherers exploited this ecologically diverse region throughout the Terminal Pleistocene and the Pleistocene-Holocene transition, and into the period during which agricultural lifeways emerged in the Holocene. Hunter-gatherers did not abandon this highland region of Thailand during periods of environmental and socioeconomic change. Keywords: Mainland Southeast Asia, Thailand, Pleistocene-Holocene transition, hunter-gatherer, radiocarbon offset, Introduction The highland regions of Mainland Southeast Asia are home to some of the earliest and longest records of hunter-gatherer activity. Recent studies from southern China indicate that hunter-gatherers had [...]

The earliest claim for domesticated rice in Island Southeast Asia (4960-3565 cal BP) derives from a single grain embedded in a ceramic sherd from Gua Sireh Cave, Borneo. In a first assessment of spikeletbase assemblages within pottery sherds using quantitative microCT analysis, the authors found no additional rice remains within this sherd to support the early date of rice farming; analysis of a more recent Gua Sireh sherd (1990-830 cal BP), however, indicates that 70 per cent of spikelet bases are from domesticated rice. This technique offers a high degree of contextual and temporal resolution for approaching organic-tempered ceramics as well-preserved archaeobotanical assemblages. Keywords: Island Southeast Asia, Borneo, archaeobotany, rice domestication, microCT, Introduction The archaeobotanical record of early (pre-3000 cal BP) domesticated rice (Oryza sativa) in Island Southeast Asia largely relies on the presence in pottery sherds of husk impressions and inclusions, [...]

The domestication of plants and animals marks one of the most significant transitions in human, and indeed global, history. Traditionally, study of the domestication process was the exclusive domain of archaeologists and agricultural scientists; today it is an increasingly multidisciplinary enterprise that has come to involve the skills of evolutionary biologists and geneticists. Although the application of new information sources and methodologies has dramatically transformed our ability to study and understand domestication, it has also generated increasingly large and complex datasets, the interpretation of which is not straightforward. In particular, challenges of equifinality, evolutionary variance, and emergence of unexpected or counter-intuitive patterns all face researchers attempting to infer past processes directly from patterns in data. We argue that explicit modeling approaches, drawing upon emerging methodologies in statistics and population genetics, provide a powerful means of addressing these limitations. Modeling also offers an approach to analyzing datasets that avoids conclusions steered by implicit biases, and makes possible the formal integration of different data types. Here we outline some of the modeling approaches most relevant to current problems in domestication research, and demonstrate the ways in which simulation modeling is beginning to reshape our understanding of the domestication process.

It is difficult to overstate the cultural and biological impacts that the domestication of plants and animals has had on our species. Fundamental questions regarding where, when, and how many times domestication took place have been of primary interest within a wide range of academic disciplines. Within the last two decades, the advent of new archaeological and genetic techniques has revolutionized our understanding of the pattern and process of domestication and agricultural origins that led to our modern way of life. In the spring of 2011, 25 scholars with a central interest in domestication representing the fields of genetics, archaeobotany, zooarchaeology, geoarchaeology, and archaeology met at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center to discuss recent domestication research progress and identify challenges for the future. In this introduction to the resulting Special Feature, we present the state of the art in the field by discussing what is known about the spatial and temporal patterns of domestication, and controversies surrounding the speed, intentionality, and evolutionary aspects of the domestication process. We then highlight three key challenges for future research. We conclude by arguing that although recent progress has been impressive, the next decade will yield even more substantial insights not only into how domestication took place, but also when and where it did, and where and why it did not.