Andrew Watson in "Agrarian and Cultural Diffusion in the Indian Ocean" identifies a number of principal "centers" and "non-centers" of agriculture origin. These include a Near East center, an African noncenter, a North Chinese center, a Southeast Asian and South Pacific noncenter, a Mesoamerican center, and finally a South American noncenter. The "Fertile Crescent" of West Asia, stretching from Tigris and Euphrates up through Anatolia and back down into Israel/Palestine, is the earliest center of agriculture, begining 10,000 BP ("Before Present"). Agriculture became widespread from 8,000 BP, with the production of barley, einkorn, emmer, and later, oats, lentils, and chickpeas.

Watson states that African agriculture, covering a wide belt of savannah and semi-tropical forest south of the Sahara into the Ethiopian highlands, began possibly around 8,000 BP in West Africa, 7,000 BP in the Horn of Africa, and around 6,000 BP in Lake Chad and along the Nile Valley. These crops included sorghum, millet, African rice, oil palm, tamarind, cowpea, yam, teff, ensete, and Ethiopian barley. Indian agriculture beginning around 5,000 - 4,700 BP (possibly earlier) in the Indus Valley, included wheat, barley, peas, brassica, lentils and chickpeas (from 4,000 BP), vetch, dates, cotton, and rice.

Patterns of agricultural diffusion in the Indian Ocean Watson identifies by tracing the movement of plants from Africa to India, including sorghum (3675 BP, or great importance by 2200 BP), finger millet (4-3,000 BP), pearl millet (3,700 BP), hyacinth bean, cowpea, pigeon pea, guar, okra, and watermelon. The diffusion of wheat from the fertile crescent to South Asia occurs between 6,000 - 3,000 BP, and into the far reaches of the upper Nile around 3,000 - 2,000 BP.

The difficulties of the transmission of plant agriculture, Watson notes, were far more complicated than a trade good, and more frequently plants were diffused contiguously rather than oceanically. The Pearl millet that appeared ex nihilo around 3,800 BP in South India to become the basis of a new agriculture is an example of this phenomenon. Watson implies that the transmission of millet may suggest human migration from Africa to South India as a possible explanation. Watson also describes the transmission of sorghum from the central African sahel to West Africa, Sind, and Punjab in 3,000 BP, and movement into India around 2,000 BP.

Imperial entities approached the question of crop diffusion in different ways. Watson argues that the Roman Empire did bring crops from India to the Mediterranean, but generally found these crops unsuitable for Mediterranean agriculture. This contrasts sharply with the approach of the Islamic states that arose after 700 C.E. With the exception of the mango tree and the coconut palm, whose diffusion was limited to tropical and semi-tropical regions of Africa, diffusion of all crops was widespread through West Asia, North Africa, Islamic Spain and Sicily between 700-1100 C.E. Most crops were also diffused widely through Sub-Saharan Africa: down the East-African coast, through most of West Africa and through much of Central Africa.

The crops included in this massive Islamic-era diffusion include: sorghum (Sorghum durra, which was developed in India from African sorghum), rice, sugar cane, cotton, citrus fruits (including sour Sevilla oranges, lemon, lime, shaddock), banana, plantain, watermelon (originally African, then from India), spinach, colocasia, eggplant, plus many other plants used as sources of fibers, condiments, beverages, medicines, narcotics, poisons, dyestuffs, perfumes, cosmetics, wood and fodder, and weeds. Watson concludes that the Islamic World proved more open to agricultural innovations and crop transmissions than any of its predecessors had been before.

JRB

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Smartt, J & N. W. Simmonds Evolution of Crop Plants Harlow: Longman, 1995.

Vavilov, N. I. Origin and Geography of Cultivated Plants Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Watson, Andrew M. Agricultural Innovation in the Early Islamic World. The Diffusion of Crops and Farming Techniques, 700-1100. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.

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Andrew Watson

Professor Emeritus

University of Toronto

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