The spread of agriculture into Far East Eurasia: Timing, pathways, and environmental feedbacks

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The domestication of natural resources and the shift to an agricultural lifestyle is one of the greatest developments in human history. It not only resulted in major cultural changes such as the emergence of civilisations but led to drastic transformations of natural environments. One of the centres of early plant (such as millet and rice) domestication and agriculture is eastern Asia. While our knowledge about the core domestication areas in China, has been improving, little is known about the spread of the crops beyond these regions and about driving factors of this process. The aim of our project is to reconstruct the spatio-temporal spread of domesticated plants into north-eastern China, the Russian Far East and northern Japan based on archaeobotanical assemblages and extensive direct AMS 14C dating of domesticated plant remains. Short sediment cores from locations favourable for agricultural practices will be collected for palynological analyses in order to estimate the onset of intensified human activities and agriculture and to reconstruct the impact of human activities on natural, mainly forested landscapes. A third main scope of this project is to study plant domestication activities by prehistoric cultures within the study region. Previous work in northern Japan has provided first evidence for such activities. However, regarding the majority of identified crops the origin of domestication has not generally been accepted and many questions remain open.