Biological globalization refers to the phenomenon where domesticated species are brought and cultivated in other favorable environments, facilitated by and for the benefit of humans. It has been defined as "the spread of plants domesticated in one area to favorable environments around the world". [1] A growing and changing human population plays an important part on what plants are moved to new locations and which are left untouched. [2]
There have been examples of biological globalization dating back to 3000 BCE, [3] but the most famous example is more recent, namely the Columbian Exchange. [1] There have been many benefits to this movement of biological material around the world, a main one being the globalization of food production, so that countries can take advantage of the different growing seasons to ensure the availability of certain food crops year-round. [1]
Introduced species are often seen as a negative thing now, but it has diversified diets, improved human health, domesticated landscapes, and sometimes increased biodiversity. [3] Biological globalization is not only a phenomenon of recent times, the big considerations are for the Columbian exchange, [4] [5] but there have been purposeful translocations long before that. Deliberate translocations included for crops, food, sport, military use and study. Also as exotic diplomatic gifts as novelties, as pest control and to cross-breed. [6] [7] Though alongside deliberate introductions came hitchhikers, which had the potential to become invasive. Many trade routes that we use today were used in the ancient worlds, especially between Asia, Europe, the Middle-East, Africa and India, [3] and the overland routes of Asia were known as ‘the Trans-Eurasian Exchange’. [8]
An early example is the spread of domesticated zebu, a species of cattle, which originated in South Asia and was introduced to Mesopotamia and Arabia in 3000 BCE, then on to the central plains of Asia and China in 1500 BCE, and Africa by 600 BCE. [3] The zebu is now the most common type of cattle found in East Africa. [3]
Some species were introduced by humans so long ago, that it is hard to tell if they are native or not. The influence of the European aristocracy can be seen nowadays, from their love of importing exotic plants and animals, that have been around for so long that they seem native. The black francolin (Francolinus francolinus) was documented as living in the Mediterranean from the time of Pliny the Elder (1st century CE), and so was thought to be a native species. It was prized during the renaissance and medieval times as a gamebird. Through DNA tracing and historical documents, it was found that it originated in Asia, maybe even South East Asia, through various trade routes. This is an example of how wealthy people have been doing these translocations for a long time. [9]
The spread of exotic birds for the menageries of wealthy people has been especially wide spread, [10] [11] like the peacock from Asia to Greece in the time of Alexander the Great, [12] and the Chukar partridge along the silk road in early BC. [13]
The spread of stone fruits (peaches, plums and cherries) has been tracked from China to Europe, as well as citrus fruits from South East Asia to Europe in Roman and Medieval times. Apples and pears came from South East Asia to China around 400 BCE.
When the New world was colonized by the Old around 1500 CE there was a major movement of cultivated crops, which was known as the Colombian Exchange. The Old world brought back seeds for foods such as corn, peppers, tomatoes and pineapples. In exchange, Europeans brought with them apples, pears, stone and citrus fruits, bananas and coconuts. [14] [15] Nowadays, the United States is a major exporter of many of these transplants for food and ornamental value, such as peaches, grapes, and citrus. The classic American homesteading symbol, the apple tree, actually had two or three major translocation events: Originating in South East Asia and spreading to China around 400 BCE, making its way to Europe, and then brought over by Europeans to North America as it was colonized. [1]
There has also been a movement of ornamental plants in recent centuries, as it became fashionable for Europe's elite to have extensive gardens. This included tulips from Turkey making their way to the Netherlands in the 17th and 18th centuries, causing the tulip craze, and Bermuda grass from Africa becoming the symbol of the American middle-class. [1]
Alongside the transportation innovations of globalization, the spread of biological technology has allowed the world to enter a new global economy. Because agriculture is such a huge economic sector it is large portion of the economy, and a large portion of that is the production of wheat in the last few centuries. Technically wheat is an invasive species in most of the countries it is grown, but because it is economically important to humans we don't classify it as such. In a way, biological globalization allowed for the economic growth of many countries on the global scale, like America and Ukraine, where wheat became a huge export. Innovations in breeding have allowed wheat to spread from milder coastal areas to harsh interior regions such as the sweeping plains of the Midwestern US, and into colder climates like Canada and Russia. The selective breeding and hardiness of the North American wheat varieties were then used by the Old world farmers to cross-breed with their varieties, and this began a back-and-forth of genetics to improve the wheat strains world-wide. [16] [17]
Wheat is a grass widely cultivated for its seed, a cereal grain that is a worldwide staple food. The many species of wheat together make up the genus Triticum ; the most widely grown is common wheat. The archaeological record suggests that wheat was first cultivated in the regions of the Fertile Crescent around 9600 BCE. Botanically, the wheat kernel is a type of fruit called a caryopsis.
Einkorn wheat can refer either to a wild species of wheat (Triticum) or to its domesticated form. The wild form is T. boeoticum, the domesticated form is T. monococcum. Einkorn is a diploid species of hulled wheat, with tough glumes ('husks') that tightly enclose the grains. The cultivated form is similar to the wild, except that the ear stays intact when ripe and the seeds are larger. The domestic form is known as "petit épeautre" in French, "Einkorn" in German, "einkorn" or "littlespelt" in English, "piccolo farro" in Italian and "escanda menor" in Spanish. The name refers to the fact that each spikelet contains only one grain.
In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era spans from the original settlement of North and South America in the Upper Paleolithic period through European colonization, which began with Christopher Columbus's voyage of 1492. Usually, the era covers the history of Indigenous cultures until significant influence by Europeans. This may have occurred decades or even centuries after Columbus for certain cultures.
Domestication is a sustained multi-generational relationship in which humans assume a significant degree of control over the reproduction and care of another group of organisms to secure a more predictable supply of resources from that group. A broader biological definition is that it is a coevolutionary process that arises from a mutualism, in which one species constructs an environment where it actively manages both the survival and reproduction of another species in order to provide the former with resources and/or services. The domestication of plants and animals by humans was a major cultural innovation ranked in importance with the conquest of fire, the manufacturing of tools, and the development of verbal language.
Human history, also called world history, is the narrative of humanity's past. It is understood and studied through anthropology, archaeology, genetics, and linguistics. Since the invention of writing, human history has been studied through primary and secondary source documents.
The Columbian exchange, also known as the Columbian interchange, was the widespread transfer of plants, animals, precious metals, commodities, culture, human populations, technology, diseases, and ideas between the New World in the Western Hemisphere, and the Old World (Afro-Eurasia) in the Eastern Hemisphere, in the late 15th and following centuries. It is named after the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus and is related to the European colonization and global trade following his 1492 voyage. Some of the exchanges were purposeful; some were accidental or unintended. Communicable diseases of Old World origin resulted in an 80 to 95 percent reduction in the number of Indigenous peoples of the Americas from the 15th century onwards, most severely in the Caribbean. The cultures of both hemispheres were significantly impacted by the migration of people from the Old World to the New. European colonists and African slaves replaced Indigenous populations across the Americas, to varying degrees. The number of Africans taken to the New World was far greater than the number of Europeans moving to the New World in the first three centuries after Columbus.
The Neolithic Revolution, or the (First) Agricultural Revolution, was the wide-scale transition of many human cultures during the Neolithic period from a lifestyle of hunting and gathering to one of agriculture and settlement, making an increasingly large population possible. These settled communities permitted humans to observe and experiment with plants, learning how they grew and developed. This new knowledge led to the domestication of plants into crops.
The founder crops are the eight plant species that were domesticated by early Neolithic farming communities in Southwest Asia and went on to form the basis of agricultural economies across much of Eurasia, including Southwest Asia, South Asia, Europe, and North Africa. They consist of three cereals, four pulses, and flax. These species were amongst the first domesticated plants in the world.
The domestication of animals is the mutual relationship between non-human animals and the humans who have influence on their care and reproduction.
In biogeography, the Mediterranean Basin is the region of lands around the Mediterranean Sea that have mostly a Mediterranean climate, with mild to cool, rainy winters and warm to hot, dry summers, which supports characteristic Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub vegetation.
Agriculture began independently in different parts of the globe, and included a diverse range of taxa. At least eleven separate regions of the Old and New World were involved as independent centers of origin. The development of agriculture about 12,000 years ago changed the way humans lived. They switched from nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyles to permanent settlements and farming.
Common wheat, also known as bread wheat, is a cultivated wheat species. About 95% of wheat produced worldwide is common wheat; it is the most widely grown of all crops and the cereal with the highest monetary yield.
An archaeophyte is a plant species which is non-native to a geographical region, but which was an introduced species in "ancient" times, rather than being a modern introduction. Those arriving after are called neophytes.
Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900 is a 1986 book by environmental historian Alfred W. Crosby. The book builds on Crosby's earlier study, The Columbian Exchange, in which he described the complex global transfer of organisms that accompanied European colonial endeavors.
The Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN) represents the early Neolithic in the Levantine and upper Mesopotamian region of the Fertile Crescent, dating to c. 12,000 – c. 8,500 years ago,. It succeeds the Natufian culture of the Epipalaeolithic Near East, as the domestication of plants and animals was in its formative stages, having possibly been induced by the Younger Dryas.
Prehistory, also known as pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the use of the first stone tools by hominins c. 3.3 million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems. The use of symbols, marks, and images appears very early among humans, but the earliest known writing systems appeared c. 5000 years ago. It took thousands of years for writing systems to be widely adopted, with writing spreading to almost all cultures by the 19th century. The end of prehistory therefore came at very different times in different places, and the term is less often used in discussing societies where prehistory ended relatively recently.
South and West Asia consists of a wide region extending from the present-day country of Turkey in the west to Bangladesh and India in the east.
Iraq ed-Dubb, or the Cave of the Bear, is an early Neolithic archeological site 7 km (4.3 mi) northwest of Ajlun in the Jordan Valley, in modern-day Jordan. The settlement existed before 8,000 BCE and experimented with the cultivation of founder crops, side by side with the harvesting of wild cereals. Along with Tell Aswad in Syria, the site shows the earliest reference to domestic hulled barley between 10,000 and 8,800 BCE. The site is located on a forested limestone escarpment above the Wadi el-Yabis in northwest Jordan. An oval-shaped stone structure was excavated along with two burials and a variety of animal and plant remains.
Indus–Mesopotamia relations are thought to have developed during the second half of 3rd millennium BCE, until they came to a halt with the extinction of the Indus valley civilization after around 1900 BCE. Mesopotamia had already been an intermediary in the trade of lapis lazuli between the Indian subcontinent and Egypt since at least about 3200 BCE, in the context of Egypt-Mesopotamia relations.
Nicole Lise Boivin is an archaeologist and former director of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
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