Early integration of pastoralism and millet cultivation in Bronze Age Eurasia.

ABSTRACT: Mobile pastoralists are thought to have facilitated the first trans-Eurasian dispersals of domesticated plants during the Early Bronze Age (ca 2500-2300 BC). Problematically, the earliest seeds of wheat, barley and millet in Inner Asia were recovered from human mortuary contexts and do not inform on local cultivation or subsistence use, while contemporaneous evidence for the use and management of domesticated livestock in the region remains ambiguous. We analysed mitochondrial DNA and multi-stable isotopic ratios (δ¹³C, δ¹⁵N and δ¹⁸O) of faunal remains from key pastoralist sites in the Dzhungar Mountains of southeastern Kazakhstan. At ca 2700 BC, Near Eastern domesticated sheep and goat were present at the settlement of Dali, which were also winter foddered

SUBMITTER: Hermes TR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6743000 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature