Did crops expand in tandem with culinary practices from their region of origin? Evidence from ancient DNA and material culture

Abstract

Grain-cooking traditions in Neolithic China have been characterised as a ‘wet’ cuisine based on the boiling and steaming of sticky varieties of cereal. One of these, broomcorn millet, was one of the earliest Chinese crops to move westward into Central Asia and beyond, into regions where grains were typically prepared by grinding and baking. Here, the authors present the genotypes and reconstructed phenotypes of 13 desiccated broomcorn millet samples from Xinjiang (1700 BC–AD 700). The absence in this area of sticky-starch millet and vessels for boiling and steaming suggests that, as they moved west, East Asian cereal crops were decoupled from traditional cooking practices and were incorporated into local cuisines.

Variation of millet grain size and cooking techniques across Asia between the late fourth and first millennia BC

“…Recent genetic studies indicate the potential disaggregation of millets and their associated culinary treatments as cultivation moved west, with the genetic mutations leading to amylose-low/free (sticky) starch genotypes becoming restricted to an East Asian type over time (Hunt et al 2018). This is further supported by ongoing archaeogenetic work, revealing the absence of sticky-starch genotypes in prehistoric Central Asia (Hunt et al 2024). This absence of genetic evidence for the sticky-starch genotype in Central Asia indicates that the western dispersal of broomcorn millet from northern China to the Inner Asian mountains was not accompanied by the transmission of eastern culinary traditions.…”