An international consortium, led by Valérie Andrieu, teacher-researcher at the Institut Méditerranéen de Biodiversité et d'Ecologie (IMBE - Aix-Marseille Université/CNRS/IRD), has discovered the oldest known cereal pollens in the world, dated at 2.3 Ma, in the long Acıgöl sedimentary series (600 m long, 0 - 2.3 Ma, SW Anatolia). This discovery pushes back the appearance of cereals in ecosystems by more than two million years, and challenges the paradigm of Neolithic domestication. While it was thought that humans were the progenitors of cereals, they appear to have emerged naturally, with man simply accelerating their expansion.
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Ancestral pollens
The oldest cereal pollens have been found in south-western Anatolia, in the long lacustrine Acıgöl series dating back 2.3 million years (Ma). These pollens, known as "proto-cereals", appear alongside spores of coprophilous fungi, which are excellent indicators of the presence of herds of large mammals, as they grow exclusively on the excrement of these animals. Pollen from ancestors of cultivated trees (olive, walnut, chestnut, Prunus hazel), as well as abundant fossil remains of large mammals (mammoth, rhinoceros, okapi, camel and numerous horses and bovids) were also found.
A new hypothesis for the appearance of cereals
While the appearance of cereals has hitherto been attributed to the "invention" of agriculture by man, this research supports an alternative hypothesis. Protocereals are thought to originate from wild grasses, whose emergence may have been encouraged by herds of large herbivores attracted by the fresh waters of Lake Acıgöl. By trampling, enriching soils with nitrogen and grazing, herds of large herbivores were able to modify the genotype of protocereals naturally present at Acıgöl, thus favoring the emergence of modern cereals. Hominin populations present in south-western Anatolia around 1.4 Ma may have benefited from the presence of cereals in herbaceous ecosystems.
If the presence of proto-cereal pollen is confirmed elsewhere on the globe, it will require a fundamental revision of the global vision of the history of human nutrition.
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Reference: Andrieu-Ponel V., Rochette P., Demory F., Alcicek H., Boulbes N., Bourlès N., Helvaci C., Lebatard A., Mayda S., Moigne A.M., Nomade S., Perrin M., Ponel P., Rambeau C., Vialet A., Gambin B., Alçiçek M.C. in press, 2021. Continuous presence of proto-cereals in Anatolia since 2.3 Ma, and their possible co-evolution with large herbivores and hominins. Scientific Reports (Nature), 11, 8914.
Publication originally published in April 2021 in Scientific Reports.
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