New evidence from the Kashmir Valley indicates the adoption of East and West Asian crops in the western Himalayas by 4400 years ago

Abstract

The mountainous areas of Inner Asia are now well established as a vector for the transmission of a number of crop plants between their centres of domestication in West and East Asia. Recent studies have indicated that agro-pastoralist populations in these mountains translocated wheat and barley to northwest China by as early as 5200 BP, while archaeobotanical and isotopic evidence from Kazakhstan indicates the use of East Asian millets by around 4500 BP. The Kashmir Valley in the western Himalayas is home to a Neolithic culture that developed possibly as early as 5000 BP, with stronger evidence for agriculture based on wheat and barley established by 4500 years ago. This brief report presents new evidence for directly dated West Asian wheat, barley and lentils as well as East Asian broomcorn millets, indicating their presence in the Kashmir Valley as early as 4400 BP. These new dates represent a significantly early movement and mixing both West and East Asian crops outside of their centres of domestication and have implications for early contacts between West, South, East and Central Asia.

Keywords

• Kashmir
• Archaeobotany
• Wheat
• Millet
• Barley