Origin and spread of wheat in China

Wheat was added as a new crop to the existing millet and rice based agricultural systems of China. Here we present 35 radiocarbon ages from wheat seeds collected from 18 sites between western (Xinjiang Province) and eastern (Henan Province) China. The earliest wheat ages cluster around 2100-1800 BCE in northern China&#39;s Hexi corridor of Gansu Province, where millet was already a well-established crop. Wheat first appears in Xinjiang and Henan about 300-400 years later, and perhaps a little earlier than this in Xinjiang, and we hypothesize that the likely route of wheat into China was via Russia through Gansu.</p

The impact of early smelting on the environment of Huoshiliang in Hexi Corridor, NW China, as recorded by fossil charcoal and chemical elements

Recent research has greatly increased our knowledge of early human impacts on the environment. Records of fossil charcoal and chemical elements from a bronze smelting site at Huoshiliang, in the Hexi corridor of northwest China, provide material with which to estimate the extent of smelting activity and its impact on the environment. Analysis of the microstructure of wood fossil charcoal is used to identify the types of charred wood and to reconstruct the local vegetation present during the period of smelting. Four wood types were used as firewood for smelting: Tamarix, Populus, Salix, and Polygonaceae. The assemblages of fossil charcoal showed that Tamarix was the most dominant shrub and was widely used as firewood, as a percentage of charcoal it increased from 89% to 97% over the smelting period.</p