Chinese archaeologists have found evidence pushing back the domestication of the sago palm at least 3,500 years earlier than was thought.
Sago Palm Garden, Bogor, West Java, Indonesia. Toksave
Sago palms, like other tropical trees, are difficult to identify archaeologically since they don't have hard-cased seeds that might survive the millennia: archaeologists have to rely instead on microscopic plant residues such as starch granules and opal phytholiths. In this case, scholars had often wondered how long ago the sago, with its tremendous store of easily-harvested starch, might have been uprooted from its original swampy habitat and cultivated closer to home.
The study, published in PLoS ONE on Wednesday, also included evidence that about 5,000 years ago, the hunter-gatherers at the Xincun site on the southern coast of China relied on bananas, acorns, and roots and tubers, but that sago trees were likely cultivated, before the introduction of rice turned them into full time farmers.
- Sago Palm history, including more about the research
- What are phytoliths, anyway?
- Starch crystals in archaeology
Yang X, Barton HJ, Wan Z, Li Q, Ma Z, Li M, Zhang D, and Wei J. 2013. Sago-type Palms Were an Important Plant Food Prior to Rice in Southern Subtropical China. PLoS ONE 8(5):e63148. (open source)
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