Around 3500 years ago, the early cultures of Europe underwent a profound change: semi-nomads who immigrated from the Eurasian steppe brought with them new methods of animal husbandry, new cultural techniques and new forms of society. Now, dates of millet grains from archaeological sites show that with this Bronze Age change, millet also established itself as a field crop in Europe.
Millet (Panicum miliaceum) is known to many today only as bird food. But this fast-growing, undemanding, and nutritious cereal plant was a staple food for many early cultures. It is known that millet was first domesticated in China around 6000 BC. Because it grows in both low and high altitudes, needs little water and can be used in many ways, its cultivation spread quickly.
Conflicting results
“The spread and establishment of millet in Central and West Asia and in Europe is one of the clearest examples of the ‘globalization’ of a food and the trans-Eurasian exchange of technologies and inventions,” explain Dragana Filipovic from the University of Kiel and her colleagues. Because millet only needs 60 to 90 days from sowing to harvest, the semi-nomads of the Central Asian steppes were able to grow this food and forage on the go, so to speak. Finds of fossil millet grains in Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and from the Kashmir Valley show that the grain plant in this region began as early as 2500 BC. Was established.
But when did the millet reach Europe? So far this has been controversial. “Strangely enough, millet was found in some excavations from the Neolithic period in Europe, which date between 6500 and 2000 BC, depending on the region,” reports Filipovic’s colleague Wiebke Kirleis. This early point in time, however, raised considerable doubts about the dates. Because that would mean that the millet was cultivated in Europe almost at the same time as it was first grown in China. Typically, however, it took several millennia for crops such as wheat and barley or domesticated animals to reach Europe from the region of their first domestication.
New dating proves Bronze Age expansion
In search of an explanation, Filipovic and her colleagues examined millet samples from 75 archaeological sites across Europe once again using radiocarbon dating. The results show: Millet cultivation by no means began in the Neolithic Age, but only started around 1500 BC. A. The grain, which originated in Asia, did not establish itself in Europe until the Bronze Age – at a time when many other innovations appeared in European cultures. At that time steppe nomads like the Yamnaja from Central Asia and the Pontic steppe immigrated to Central Europe via the Danube valley and brought new cultural techniques and forms of society with them.
The dating of the millet samples now suggests that these semi-nomads also had the millet with them. Because the data show how the cultivation of this grain spreads very quickly from east to west in Europe. In the 16th century BC At first millet was only available in southwestern Ukraine. 100 years later they can already be found in the Danube region – in the area of today’s Romania, Hungary and as far as Croatia, as well as in northern Italy. “In the middle of the 14th century BC The millet had already spread over Central Europe and in the south to the Aegean Sea ”, report Filipovic and her team. By the 12th century, millet was also grown in what is now Germany and Poland.
Millet cultivation thus spread in Europe parallel to other cultural techniques and commercial objects. “This indicates extensive trade and communication networks during the Bronze Age. But the research also shows that millet was quickly and widely recognized as a versatile addition to the cuisine that was then dominated by wheat and barley, ”says Kirleis. The people in Bronze Age Europe apparently quickly got to know and use the advantages of the fast-growing field crop. It could be grown as a catch crop between the other grains, but it could also serve as a short-term substitute if, for example, a frost break had destroyed the main crop.
Source: Christian Albrechts University in Kiel; Technical article: Scientific Reports, doi: 10.1038 / s41598-020-70495-z