I was browsing around the internet this morning when I ran across a personal blog that linked to my original fig tree and origins of agriculture story and asked two really great questions that hadn't been answered in any of the stories he had seen. Somehow, I've lost the link to the blog, which I am very sorry about, but here are the good questions that the blogger asked.
Why is there a gold covering on the smallest fig in this photograph? Does it mean the Neolithic folks were worshiping the fig?
How is it possible that a single mutated fig tree would be the one that people would know to propagate? What are the odds of that?
These are excellent questions! Bravo! The Internet is a great and wonderful place that I love to reside in.
First of all, the gold was placed on the smallest fig by a modern-day technician to enable the use of scanning electron microscopy. In preparing samples for examination under a scanning electron microscope, large samples don't need to be sliced into tiny slivers, but they do need an extremely thin coat of gold (or a gold/palladium combination, or platinum or other material), which enhances conductivity and produces a greater signal. Here are some links to explain this:
The second question must involve a Just-So story, that is to say, this is complete speculation on my part for which there is no archaeological evidence but is, at least to my way of thinking, a rational explanation of what might have happened. Archaeologists by and large hate just-so stories, but this is what is implied by the research and I'm going to go ahead and go out on a limb (pun intended).
Finding the single fig tree mutation that created figs without fig wasp embryos probably does seem outrageously lucky. But what the story implies is that by 11,000 years ago, our Neolithic ancestors had already recognized that if you cut a branch off some kinds of tree and stick it in the ground and take a little care of it, you get a new tree. The implications are that standard practice for our ancestors was to do that, whenever he or she found a tree that bore good fruit. So, we speculate that some Neolithic person out hunting for figs ran across a tree with particularly tasty fruit (and in this case, fruit that was bug free), cut a branch off, took it home and rooted it. Perhaps more than one person did this to the same original tree; or perhaps his tree grew and his neighbors cut branches off that one. That's the difference between natural selection and cultural selection--we humans select for the characteristics of a thing that we like best, whether it is good for the plant or animal or not. We call that process domestication.
Why is there a gold covering on the smallest fig in this photograph? Does it mean the Neolithic folks were worshiping the fig? How is it possible that a single mutated fig tree would be the one that people would know to propagate? What are the odds of that?
These are excellent questions! Bravo! The Internet is a great and wonderful place that I love to reside in.
First of all, the gold was placed on the smallest fig by a modern-day technician to enable the use of scanning electron microscopy. In preparing samples for examination under a scanning electron microscope, large samples don't need to be sliced into tiny slivers, but they do need an extremely thin coat of gold (or a gold/palladium combination, or platinum or other material), which enhances conductivity and produces a greater signal. Here are some links to explain this:
- Indiana University: Protocols for Scanning Electron Microscopy
- Wikipedia | Sample Preparation, Electron microscope
- Colloidal Gold, a useful marker for transmission and scanning electron microscopy, article abstract in J Histochem Cytochem.
The second question must involve a Just-So story, that is to say, this is complete speculation on my part for which there is no archaeological evidence but is, at least to my way of thinking, a rational explanation of what might have happened. Archaeologists by and large hate just-so stories, but this is what is implied by the research and I'm going to go ahead and go out on a limb (pun intended).
Finding the single fig tree mutation that created figs without fig wasp embryos probably does seem outrageously lucky. But what the story implies is that by 11,000 years ago, our Neolithic ancestors had already recognized that if you cut a branch off some kinds of tree and stick it in the ground and take a little care of it, you get a new tree. The implications are that standard practice for our ancestors was to do that, whenever he or she found a tree that bore good fruit. So, we speculate that some Neolithic person out hunting for figs ran across a tree with particularly tasty fruit (and in this case, fruit that was bug free), cut a branch off, took it home and rooted it. Perhaps more than one person did this to the same original tree; or perhaps his tree grew and his neighbors cut branches off that one. That's the difference between natural selection and cultural selection--we humans select for the characteristics of a thing that we like best, whether it is good for the plant or animal or not. We call that process domestication.
- Wikipedia | Fruit tree propagation
- North Carolina State University | Plant Propagation by Stem Cuttings
- Fig Trees - The Early Domestication of the Fig Tree
- More Figgy News: The Earliest?
- The Scanning Electron Microscope, from Mary Bellis, Inventors guide at About
- The Fig Tree, from Regina Bailey, Biology guide at About
- Rudyard Kipling's Just-So Stories
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