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DNA evidence for multiple introductions of barley into Europe following dispersed domestications in Western Asia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

G. Jones ,
M.P. Charles ,
M.K. Jones ,
S. Colledge ,
F.J. Leigh ,
D.A. Lister ,
L.M.J. Smith ,
W. Powell ,
T.A. Brown  and
H. Jones
G. Jones
Affiliation:
1Department of Archaeology, University of Sheffield, Northgate House, West Street, Sheffield S1 4ET, UK
M.P. Charles
Affiliation:
2Institute of Archaeology, University of Oxford, 36 Beaumont Street, Oxford OX1 2PG, UK
M.K. Jones
Affiliation:
3McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3ER, UK
S. Colledge
Affiliation:
4Institute of Archaeology, University College London, 31–34 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PY, UK
F.J. Leigh
Affiliation:
5National Institute of Agricultural Botany, Huntingdon Road, Cambridge CB3 0LE, UK
D.A. Lister
Affiliation:
3McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3ER, UK
L.M.J. Smith
Affiliation:
5National Institute of Agricultural Botany, Huntingdon Road, Cambridge CB3 0LE, UK
W. Powell
Affiliation:
6Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences, Aberystwyth University, Aberystwyth SY23 3DA, UK
T.A. Brown
Affiliation:
7Manchester Interdisciplinary Biocentre, Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Manchester, Manchester M1 7DN, UK
H. Jones
Affiliation:
5National Institute of Agricultural Botany, Huntingdon Road, Cambridge CB3 0LE, UK
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Abstract

It has long been recognised that the Neolithic spread across Europe via two separate routes, one along the Mediterranean coasts, the other following the axis of the major rivers. But did these two streams have a common point of origin in south-west Asia, at least with regard to the principal plant and animals species that were involved? This study of barley DNA shows that the domesticated barley grown in Neolithic Europe falls into three separate types (groups A, B and C), each of which may have had a separate centre of origin in south-west Asia. Barley was relatively rarely cultivated by the early Linearbandkeramik farmers of Central and Northern Europe, but became more common during the fifth and fourth millennia BC. The analysis reported here indicates that a genetic variety of barley more suitable for northern growing conditions was introduced from south-west Asia at this period. It also suggests that the barley grown in south-eastern Europe at the very beginning of the Neolithic may have arrived there by different routes from two separate centres of domestication in south-west Asia. The multiple domestications that this pattern reveals imply that domestication may have been more a co-evolutionary process between plants and people than an intentional human action.

Keywords

EuropeNeolithicorigins of agriculturedomesticationbarley
Type
Research
Information
Antiquity , Volume 87 , Issue 337 , September 2013 , pp. 701 - 713
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 2013

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