Early Agriculture Left Traces In Animal Bones

EurekAlert! ^ | March 23, 2009 | Seth Newsome

[SunkenCiv]

The dog and pig bones, as well as bones of other animals analyzed in the study, come from an archaeological site in a region of northwest China considered to be a possible early center of East Asian agriculture. Chemical traces within the dog bones suggest a diet high in millet, a grain that wild dogs are unlikely to eat in large quantities, but that was a staple of early agricultural societies in northwest China. "If the dogs were consuming that much millet, their human masters were likely doing the same," says Seth Newsome, a coauthor on the study and a post-doctoral associate at the Carnegie Institution's Geophysical Laboratory, where the chemical analysis was performed.

The bones come from a Neolithic site known as Dadiwan, in China's western Loess Plateau, excavated first by a Chinese team in the late 70s and early 80s, and in 2006 by a team from the University of California, Davis, and Lanzhou University in China. Humans occupied the site during two main phases, from 7,900 to 7,200 years ago (Phase 1) and from 6,500 to 4,900 years (Phase 2). Though some fossil remains of millet plants have been found in both of these deposits, the fossils don't directly reveal how much millet contributed to the local diet.

[SunkenCiv]

Help me Dadiwan, you're our only hope. ;')

[SunkenCiv]

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