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Saturday, June 24, 2023

The Natufians: The culture most likely to have domesticated vitis sylvestris

Given the location (The Levant) and timing (11,000 years ago) espoused in the Dong, et al., study, it is most likely the Natufian Culture that domesticated the progenitor of the major European wine grape varieties.


Prior to Dong, et al., the commonly held belief was that vitis vinifera sprung from a Neolithic Age, Caucasus-region domestication of the wild vitis sylvestris. The Dong, et al., genetic study has shown otherwise.

In previous posts I have reported on the genesis of the study, the vitis sylvestris story, how Dong, et al., established genetic populations, the study team’s case for two simultaneous domestication events, the genetic traits associated with the individual domestication centers, the Levant as the domestication center from which all European grapes originated, and the physical environment in the Levant at the time of the domestication. In this post I highlight the Culture (most likely) responsible for domesticating the Levantine vitis sylvestris.

Kebaran Culture
Since 14,500 BP, people have occupied every eco-zone in the Near East and semi-sedentism was already a settlement pattern among foragers (Bar-Yosef). The inhabitants of the Levant at this stage were of the Kebaran culture and excavations at the Ohalo II site illustrates the settlement-pattern point while also providing the earliest evidence of grape usage within the region.

In the Fall of 1989, the Sea of Galilee dropped to unusually low levels, revealing a submerged prehistoric site several meters away from the shore. The site -- Ohalo II -- included scattered artifacts and remains of huts, hearths, and graves with in-situ Kebaran remains (Kislev, et al.).

Figure 1. Ohalo II site at shoreline of Sea of Galilee
(Source: Kislev, et al.)

Table 1. Materials excavated from Ohalo II.

Tools

Animal Remains

Vegetal Remains

Typical flint tools

Fish 

Wild barley (most prevalent

Bone tools

Tortoise

Wild emmer wheat

Mediterranean shell beads

Birds

Wild almonds


Hare

Wild olive


Fox

Wild pistachio


Gazelle

Wild grape seeds


Deer



A picture of one of the excavated grape pips is shown below. These seeds were identified as belonging to the wild type by the low length/breadth ratio and the short beak. This is the first evidence of wild grapes in Israel.

Figure 2. Grape pip excavated at 
Ohalo II (Source: Kislev, et al.)

According to Kislev, et al., the food remains at Ohalo II "indicate a wide range of plant and animal species used for human consumption. This diversity attests to the broad spectrum economy practiced by the Kebarans."

The team deduced that the site was occupied at least twice a year and assumed an alignment with grass-grain harvesting in Spring and fruit gathering in the late Summer and Fall. The authors characterize thia as a "logistical mobility settlement-subsistence pattern" where "small task-specific expeditions are sent to retrieve food and other resources while the core group remains at one place." The bi-seasonality of plant food use in the same site "can be interpreted as the initial steps towards sedentism and cereal agriculture."

The Kebaran culture (20,000 - 14,500 BP) was, due to the overarching cold, limited to the coastal Levant and isolated oases. The Geometric Kebaran took advantage of climate amelioration to expand into the formerly desertic belt which had become "a lusher steppe" (Bar-Yosef).

Natufian Culture
The Levant was subjected to an abrupt, short, cold crisis around 13,000 BP followed by a period of increased precipitation and warming. This improvement in climate led to an expansion in parkland and woodland and associated food resources. It was in this environment that the Natufian Culture began to gain prominence. Arriving on the scene initially as foragers, the continually improving climate led them to become sedentary -- due to plentitude of food resources -- and establish "a series of Early Natufian hamlets in a delineated homeland." The major characteristics of the Natufian Culture are illustrated in the chart below.


As much of a boon that climate was to the Early Natufian culture, it was a bane in later days. The boon? "Natufian communities practiced intensive and extensive harvesting of wild cereals as part of an anticipated summer mobility pattern." The bane? The cold, dry climate associated with the Younger Dryas (12,800 BP - 11,600 BP) led to a rapid reduction in the size of the lushest vegetation belts and reduction in yields of natural stands of C3 plants such as cereals. This change in conditions  led to changes in organizational strategies to include: reduced sedentism; shifts in settlement locations (abandonment of old sites and establishment of new sites in the steppic zone); experimental plantings; and clearing of patches of land. During this period plant and animal resources were further depleted by the activities of neighboring foragers.

According to Bar-Yosef, the increased population levels that had come with increased sedentism "made any short-term climatic change motivational for human groups to gain control over food resources." Thus, "the first experiments in systematic cultivation most likely occurred during the Younger Dryas."

Keynes was not as supportive of the theory of the Natufians as the first agriculturists: "The older theory on the origins of agriculture that had become a consensus by the late 1980s held that the pressures of the Younger Dryas drove the Natufians to adopt agriculture as a survival strategy ... By the early 2010s, this hypothesis has been rejected by some archaeologists and historians, who see the Natufians of the Younger Dryas as in a transitional stage that was only moving towards agriculture, ... in which they experimented with wild plant cultivation."

It should be pointed out that much of the foregoing discussion is based on domestication of wheat, legumes, etc., and does not involve grapevines. As a matter of fact, while we have evidence of grape consumption in the Kebaran culture, no grape residue has been recovered from any of the excavated Natufian sites in the Mediterranean due to the poor preservation of vegetal remains in the terra rossa soil.

Whether or not the Natufians were the first agriculturists, or just experimenters, the genetic study conducted by Dong, et al., places the domestication of the grapevine squarely within their space-time; and we will run with that.

Post-Younger-Dryas
There was  rapid return of wetter weather post the Younger Dryas and this led to the expansion of numerous lakes and ponds and cultivation of annual crops along the shorelines. The first large villages began to appear (up to 2.5 ha) and they relied on cultivated barley and wheat or "their wild progenitors." According to Bar-Yosef, there is ample evidence to show that the inhabitants of these villages were descendants of local Natufian populations with changes in material culture, social organization, and daily lifeways. "The first manifestation of the cultural change that heralded the Neolithic Revolution is known in the Levant as the Khiamian."

Neolithic farming communities thrived under the favorable climate conditions of the Early Holocene and expanded "along the Levantine Corridor into Anatolia and neighboring regions." This, then, was the first movement of the cultivated grapevine outside of its birthplace. 

The initial movement of the cultivated grapevine
 from the Western Distribution Center (black oval)
into Anatolia (red arrow) with the expanding
Neolithic farming communities.

I will  cover that movement more fully in subsequent posts.

Bibliography
Bar-Yosef, O., The Natufian Culture in the Levant, Threshold to the Origins of Agriculture, Evolutionary Anthropology.
Bar-Yosef, O., and F. Valla, The Natufian Culture and the Origin of the Neolithic in the Levant. Current Anthropology 31(4) January.
Dong, et al., Dual domestications and origin of traits in grapevine evolution, Science, 3/3/23
EurekAlert, Human Mobility and Western Asia's early state-level societies, Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology, 5/28/20.M. E> Kislev, D. Nadel and I. Carmi, Epipalaeolithic (19,000 BP) cereal and fruit diet at Ohalo II, Sea of Galilee, Israel. Review of Palaeobotant and Palynology, 73 (1992): 161 - 166.
Lord Keynes, The Natufians and the Origins of Agriculture in the ancient Near East, heterodox.economicblogs.org, July 31, 2017.


©Wine -- Mise en abyme

Saturday, June 10, 2023

The domestication of vitis vinifera: The physical environment

According to Dong, et al., two variants of the wild grape vitis sylvestris were simultaneously domesticated in the Caucasus and Western Asia resulting in two variants of vitis vinifera. The Caucasus-sourced vitis vinifera flourished on both sides of the Caucasus Mountains, and even extended into the Carpathian Basin, but had no impact beyond this limited geographical area. The Western Asia domesticate, by a process of elimination, must be the source variety for the bulk of the world's wine grapes. I will explore the environment wherein this variety was domesticated as well as the people who most likely brought sylvestris to heel. I examine the physical environment in this post.

Vitis sylvestris was domesticated in the early part of the Holocene. The physical environment in Western Asia during this time period is illustrated in the chart below.


Dong, et al., did not specify the location of the domestication center within Western Asia but an eyeballing of their placement of the center on the map would seem to place it within the confines of the region called The Levant. The coverage of the Levant is illustrated in the rightmost map below and the blue arrow illustrates the relationship between that region and the Western Asia Domestication Center.


According to Bar-Yosef and Valla, "lines of evidence demonstrate that cold, wet conditions" dominated in The Levant in the late Pleistocene. This was followed by a dry spell in the transition period and a steady increase in arboreal pollen. An increase in humidity is observed for the in the Early Holocene "in the Middle Euphrates Valley in Northern Syria and from the Lower Jordan Valley" (Bar-Yosef and Valla). The paleoclimatic record shows the following (Bar-Yosef):
  • Late Glacial Maximum (20,000 - 14,500 B.P.)
    • Entire region cold and dry
    • Hilly coastal areas enjoyed winter precipitation and were covered by forests
  • 14,500 - 12,800 B.P.
    • Precipitation slowly increased over the entire region beginning at 14,5000
    • More rapid increase from 13,500 B.P. to 13,000
    • Rate peaked around 13,500 in the southern Levant
  • Younger Dryas (12,800 - 11,600 B.P.)
    • Rate of rainfall decreased
  • 11,300 B.P.
    • Increased rainfall returns
      • Very wet early Holocene in the northern Levant and Anatolia
      • Did not reach the previous peak in central and southern Levant
  • Gradual rise in sea level
    • Post the Late Glacial Maximum and until the mid-Holocene
    • Reduced the flat, sandy coastal plain of the Levant by a stretch 5 - 20 km wide and 500 km long.
During the Holocene, The Levant was characterized by a variety of landscapes running between the southern flanks of the Taurus Mountains of Turkey and the Sinai Peninsula:
  • Narrow coastal plains
  • Two parallel continuous mountain ranges with a rift valley in between
  • An eastward-sloping plateau dissected by many eastward-running ravines.
There was marked seasonality, with cold, rainy winters and hot, dry summers being the norm. Two annual patterns of winter storm tracks were observed:
  1. Humidity from the Mediterranean flowed to the southern Levant
  2. Storms arrive from northern Europe and turn to the northern Levant.
There were three vegetational zones (Bar-Yosef):
  • Where annual precipitation exceeded 400 mm/year, Mediterranean woodland and open parkland 
    • Oak-dominated parkland and woodland provided the"highest biomass of food available to humans." Dense oak forests (> 800 mm/year rainfall) maintain a lower biomass than the open parklands
  • Where precipitation was < 400 mm/year, shrub land and steppic vegetation 
  • Arid-type vegetation.

Effect of the Physical Environment on Vitis Sylvestris/Vitis Vinifera
Environmental conditions have marked effects on grape development today and it is quite likely that grapes reacted similarly in times past. It is likely that vitis sylvestris exhibited different characteristics in the cold of the Pleistocene than did vitis vinifera in the warming period of the Early Holocene. As a matter of fact, the last glacial cycle (115,000 - 11,700 years ago) was the scene of one of the most severe vitis sylvestris bottlenecks, driving worldwide population down to between 10,000 and 40,000 vines.

The warming period began with the retreat of the glaciers and the changes in the physical environment highlighted in map 1 above. Just the mere fact of the warming would have positive effects on the grapevine and its product. Warmer temperatures would lead to riper, more palatable grapes (Remember that grapes in this early period were used as a food source as opposed to a beverage.). This riper, more palatable fruit would stand in stark contrast to the potentially harder, greener product that would have been the norm in the colder, drier Pleistocene.

Increased humidity would have led to more vigorous vines and plumper fruit. Grapes would not only be more palatable, they would also be more substantial.

The forest expansion that resulted from the warming would have also been beneficial to vitis vinifera. The grapevine is a climber and more trees represented more growth/spread opportunities for the population. 

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In my next post I will explore the culture that most likely domesticated the grapevine.

Bibliography
Bar-Yosef, O., The Natufian Culture in the Levant, Threshold to the Origins of Agriculture, Evolutionary Anthropology.
Bar-Yosef, O., and F. Valla, The Natufian Culture and the Origin of the Neolithic in the Levant. Current Anthropology 31(4) January.
humanpast.net, Food around 11,000 BC.

©Wine -- Mise en abyme

Monday, June 5, 2023

Georgia is not the source of all European wine grape varieties; the Levant is

The commonly held belief was that the wild grapevine vitis sylvestris was domesticated at a single point and spread to the rest of the world therefrom. Researchers have named the single-domestication-point hypothesis the "Noah Hypothesis." The hypothesis is illustrated in the chart below where domestication candidate sites are identified and the onward distribution routes of vitis vinifera plotted.


The Dong, et al., study refutes the origin component of the Noah Hypothesis and replaces it with a dual, simultaneous-domestication model.


I now turn to the distribution aspect of the Noah Hypothesis. While the Dong, et al., study does provide for a domestication center in the Caucasus, the result was "... mainly confined to both sides of the Caucasus Mountains, with a limited dispersal into the Carpathian Basin by the northern Black Sea." According to the authors, "... CG2 (ed. The Caucasian domesticate) represents a local domestication effort that had a minor impact on grapevine domestication." The distribution path of CG2 is illustrated in the map below.

Red oval approximates the Caucasus distribution center;
black arrow illustrates the range of the grapevine.

If we take the Dong, et al., argument at face value, the mother of all grapevines originated in the Levant, the Western Asia Domestication Center illustrated above. I will delve further into the region and its inhabitants in upcoming posts. In future posts I will also trace the spread of grapevines ouward from this source point.

©Wine -- Mise en abyme