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

自然资源的驯化和向农业生活方式的转变是人类历史上最伟大的发展之一。它不仅导致了重大的文化变革，如文明的出现，而且还导致了自然环境的剧烈变化。东亚是早期植物(如谷子和水稻)驯化和农业的中心之一。虽然我们对中国核心驯化区的了解一直在提高，但对这些地区以外的作物传播情况和这一过程的驱动因素知之甚少。我们项目的目的是基于考古植物学组合和驯化植物遗骸的广泛直接AMS 14C测年，重建驯化植物进入中国东北部、俄罗斯远东和日本北部的时空分布。将从有利于农业实践的地点收集短沉积物岩芯进行孢粉分析，以估计人类活动加剧和农业活动的开始，并重建人类活动对主要是森林覆盖的自然景观的影响。该项目的第三个主要范围是研究研究区域内史前文化对植物的驯化活动。之前在日本北部的研究已经为这种活动提供了第一个证据。然而，关于大多数已确定的作物，驯化的来源尚未被普遍接受，许多问题仍然悬而未决。

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.