Earliest direct evidence for broomcorn millet and wheat in the central Eurasian steppe region

• Autores: Michael D. Frachetti, Robert N. Spengler, Gayle Fritz, Alexei N. Mar'yashev
• Localización: Antiquity, ISSN 0003-598X, Vol. 84, Nº 326, 2010, págs. 993-1010
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Before 3000 BC, societies of western Asia were cultivating wheat and societies of China were cultivating broomcorn millet; these are early nodes of the world's agriculture. The authors are searching for early cereals in the vast lands that separate the two, and report a breakthrough at Begash in south-east Kazakhstan. Here, high precision recovery and dating have revealed the presence of both wheat and millet in the later third millennium BC. Moreover the context, a cremation burial, raises the suggestion that these grains might signal a ritual rather than a subsistence commodity