Adapting crops, landscapes, and food choices: Patterns in the dispersal of domesticated plants across Eurasia

Fuller, Dorian Q.; Lucas, Leilani

doi:10.1017/9781316686942.013

Cited by 39 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 84 publications

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“…[89,90]. Similarly, plasticity in the expression of vernalization genes among different land races of wheat and barley may have been key in determining the pace and direction of their eastward dispersal across and around the Tibetan Plateau into Asia [89,91], as well as the dispersal of rice out of the Yangtze basin into northern China [89], and of maize from central Mexico throughout North America [92][93][94].…”

Section: Genetic Accommodation and Assimilationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Domestication as a model system for the extended evolutionary synthesis

Zeder

2017

Interface Focus.

120

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One of the challenges in evaluating arguments for extending the conceptual framework of evolutionary biology involves the identification of a tractable model system that allows for an assessment of the core assumptions of the extended evolutionary synthesis (EES). The domestication of plants and animals by humans provides one such case study opportunity. Here, I consider domestication as a model system for exploring major tenets of the EES. First I discuss the novel insights that niche construction theory (NCT, one of the pillars of the EES) provides into the domestication processes, particularly as they relate to five key areas: coevolution, evolvability, ecological inheritance, cooperation and the pace of evolutionary change. This discussion is next used to frame testable predictions about initial domestication of plants and animals that contrast with those grounded in standard evolutionary theory, demonstrating how these predictions might be tested in multiple regions where initial domestication took place. I then turn to a broader consideration of how domestication provides a model case study consideration of the different ways in which the core assumptions of the EES strengthen and expand our understanding of evolution, including reciprocal causation, developmental processes as drivers of evolutionary change, inclusive inheritance, and the tempo and rate of evolutionary change.

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Section: Genetic Accommodation and Assimilationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Domestication as a model system for the extended evolutionary synthesis

Zeder

2017

Interface Focus.

120

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“…Human sociocultural evolution and niche construction are clearly linked. Over millennia, human societies accumulated an increasingly complex and potent suite of culturally inherited, socially learned and socially enacted practices for niche construction, such as domestication, livestock husbandry, and irrigation that have increased environmental productivity in support of human populations (Smith 2007a ; Ellis et al 2013b ; Ellis 2015 ; Zeder 2016 ; Fuller and Lucas 2017 ). Even the most productive hunting and foraging strategies were capable of sustaining no more than a dozen hunter-gatherers on a single square kilometer of land (Ellis 2015 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evolving the Anthropocene: linking multi-level selection with long-term social–ecological change

et al. 2017

Self Cite

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To what degree is cultural multi-level selection responsible for the rise of environmentally transformative human behaviors? And vice versa? From the clearing of vegetation using fire to the emergence of agriculture and beyond, human societies have increasingly sustained themselves through practices that enhance environmental productivity through ecosystem engineering. At the same time, human societies have increased in scale and complexity from mobile bands of hunter-gatherers to telecoupled world systems. We propose that these long-term changes are coupled through positive feedbacks among social and environmental changes, coevolved primarily through selection acting at the group level and above, and that this can be tested by combining archeological evidence with mechanistic experiments using an agent-based virtual laboratory (ABVL) approach. A more robust understanding of whether and how cultural multi-level selection couples human social change with environmental transformation may help in addressing the long-term sustainability challenges of the Anthropocene.

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“…The term cultivation usually refers to the growing of domesticated crops for food and other purposes, but it can also refer to non-agricultural contexts of wild-plant exploitation. The meaning has expanded to include a range of activities that promote plant growth such as tillage, land clearance, plant sowing, weeding, harvesting and deliberate burning of vegetation (Harris 2007;Harris and Fuller 2014;Fuller and Lucas 2017). If the sites were settled for a longer period than before, it is likely that shifting cultivation was not taking place but, instead, cultivation took place in longer-term, permanent plots.…”

Section: From Late Mesolithic To Middle Neolithic (6450-3200 Bc)mentioning

confidence: 99%

The environment they lived in: anthropogenic changes in local and regional vegetation composition in eastern Fennoscandia during the Neolithic

Alenius

Marquer

Molinari

et al. 2020

Veget Hist Archaeobot

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Understanding about regional versus local changes in vegetation is critical in answering archaeological questions, in particular at a time when humans are assumed to have caused higher disturbances at local scales rather than regional scales; this is the case during the Neolithic. The aim of this paper is to assess the impact of Neolithic land use on regional and local vegetation dynamics, plant composition and disturbance processes (e.g. fire) in eastern Fennoscandia. We apply the Landscape Reconstruction Algorithm (LRA) to high-resolution pollen records from three lacustrine sediment cores that cover the Neolithic period. We calculate changes in vegetation composition and the rate of plant compositional change. Fire dynamics are estimated as an indicator of land use, although fire can result from both natural and anthropogenic disturbances. Our results show that during the Early Neolithic, changes were mainly driven by natural and climate-induced factors and vegetation composition and fire activity were similar at both regional and local scales. From ca. 4000 bc onwards, trends in vegetation and fire dynamics start to differ between regional and local scales. This is due to local land uses that are overshadowed at the regional scale by climate-induced factors. The use of the LOVE model in pollen analyses is therefore very useful to highlight local land uses that are not visible by using REVEALS.

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Adapting crops, landscapes, and food choices: Patterns in the dispersal of domesticated plants across Eurasia

Cited by 39 publications

References 84 publications

Domestication as a model system for the extended evolutionary synthesis

Domestication as a model system for the extended evolutionary synthesis

Evolving the Anthropocene: linking multi-level selection with long-term social–ecological change

The environment they lived in: anthropogenic changes in local and regional vegetation composition in eastern Fennoscandia during the Neolithic

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