Multidisciplinary Contributions to Legume Crop History: Proceed with Caution

Accurate understanding of crop biogeography facilitates comprehension of agronomic potential, genetic diversity, and crop–pathogen evolution. Classic perspectives are exemplified by Vavilov (1987), a posthumous compilation, and Harlan (1971). Origin and geographic spread of a given crop provide clues as to environmental interactions, including relative adaption to pests, pathogens, and abiotic factors (Dark and Gent, 2001; Dugan, 2015). Great antiquity of pulse crops (pea, chickpea, lentil, bitter vetch, faba bean) is documented archeobotanically for the Fertile Crescent and several adjacent areas, including much of Europe in succeeding times (e. etc., and more recent languages have been summarized (Miki´c, 2012). However, there remain areas in which data are scarce or in which there is conspicuous dissent from consensus. This is especially true for the Bronze Age Steppes, now seen as critically important in dissemination of language, culture, and peoples (Haak et al., 2015), and possibly the geographic location for the ancestral Proto-Indo-Europeans (Anthony, 2007). Archeobotanical data for the region remain suboptimal due to the infrequency of applying modern techniques for recovery and dating of plant remains (Mallory, 2014), but repeated instances of cereal chaff imprints or chaff itself on pottery (∼4500 to 3500 BC) imply cropping of cereals (Motuzaite-Matuzeviciute, 2012). Presence of pulse crops is not yet conclusively documented, and they may have been absent, although they are present in the archeobotanical record for regions bordering the Steppes (Dugan, 2015). Archeobotanical evidence for pulses appears lacking in the Steppes when archeobotanical sites with recovery of pulses are mapped (Miki´c, 2012, 2015a, 2016; Miki´c et al., 2014). One possible explanation for archeological recovery of remains of cereals in the Steppes, but not of pulses, is that Bronze Age Steppes were semiarid, as indicated by paleoclimatic studies (Alekseeva et al., 2007; Khomutova et al., 2007; Mitusov et al., 2009). Estimates of mean annual precipitation imply climate may have been unsuitable for consistent cultivation of legumes, but typically with sufficient moisture for cereals (Dugan, 2015). We have no literature in Proto-Indo-European (PIE, a reconstructed language), analogous to the agricultural writings of ancient civilizations. But perhaps analyses of PIE can promote understanding of Bronze Age agriculture with regard to pulses. Initial inspection of agronomic literature gives reason to believe so. Miki´c (2016), indicates a putatively PIE root * er@g w [h] – (" a kernel of a leguminous plant ") as originating in the Steppes just northeast of the Black Sea. Miki´c (2015a,b) attributes to PIE …