A natural adaptive syndrome as a model for the origins of cereal agriculture

A novel explanation of the origin of cereal agriculture is proposed, based on the ecology and adaptive morphology of wild cereals ancestral to our founder cereals (einkorn, emmer and barley). Wild cereals are unusually large-seeded. A natural evolutionary-ecological syndrome relates large seed, awns...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the Royal Society. B, Biological sciences Biological sciences, 2018-03, Vol.285 (1875), p.20180277-20180277
Main Authors: Wood, David, Lenné, Jillian M.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adaptation, Biological
Agricultural management
Agriculture
Barley
Cereal Domestication
Cereals
Domestication
Ecology
Environment
Flowers
Germination
Grass Awns
Grassland Ecology
Grasslands
Holocene
Hordeum
Humans
Large Seed
Monoculture
Monodominance
Origins
Plants (botany)
Pleistocene
Review
Review Articles
Seed Burying
Seeds
Stability
Triticum
Zea mays
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Summary:A novel explanation of the origin of cereal agriculture is proposed, based on the ecology and adaptive morphology of wild cereals ancestral to our founder cereals (einkorn, emmer and barley). Wild cereals are unusually large-seeded. A natural evolutionary-ecological syndrome relates large seed, awns and monodominance (LAM). Awns bury attached seeds in the soil, protecting seed from fire; buried seed needs to be large to emerge on germination; large seeds, growing without competition from small-seeded plants, will produce monodominant vegetation. Climatic and edaphic instability at the Pleistocene–Holocene boundary would have provided an impetus for the spread of annual ruderal grasses. LAM grassland provided an obvious natural model for the origins of cereal agriculture. Subsequent field management would mimic the natural niche (MNN). The fact that monodominance is a long-standing character of the natural LAM syndrome validates cereal monocultures (now producing most of our food). An alternative explanation of crop domestication, by auditioning a great range of species for a human-constructed niche (NCT), is rejected.
ISSN:0962-8452
1471-2954
DOI:10.1098/rspb.2018.0277