First Vineyard Dates Back 11,000 Years Ago to the Stone Age, Genetics Prove

Genetic research demonstrates that the first vineyard dates back 11,000 years to the Stone Age.

According to research that was presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference last week in Washington, DC, domestication of grapevines may have started about 11,000 years ago, not 8,500 as was previously thought.

This process is said to have occurred simultaneously in Western Asia and the Caucasus, according to the paper, which was co-authored by a sizable, international cohort of academics. It is still unclear exactly how viticulture's concept spread at this time.

Genetics of the First Vineyard

They were able to pinpoint the time and location of a split by analyzing the 3,525 DNA sequences of cultivated and wild samples of Vitis vinifera and the sylvestris subspecies. The split is evidence that early humans chose vines based on the characteristics of their fruit, with hermaphroditism, color, and palatability among the most important factors.

However, it is still unclear whether these grapes were intended for eating or for fermentation into alcohol. Wei Chen, one of the authors and a professor at Yunnan Agricultural University, hypothesized that at this time in human history, it was nonetheless just the former.

According to Chen, it is still uncertain whether early humans knew necessary to produce wine. He believes that grapes were domesticated for consumption by prehistoric people in the Caucasus.

Milestones and Inventions

Chen clarified that despite that, it was still a significant advancement.

According to him, the grapevine was likely the first fruit crop that humans domesticated.

According to the study, vines domesticated in the Caucasus would eventually be used for winemaking, whereas vines domesticated in Western Asia resulted in the table grapes that are consumed today.

Around the same time that wheat was first cultivated, grapevines were also planted; both of these developments would eventually lead to a new booze industrialization for humanity by enabling the production of beer and wine, The Drinks Business reports.

The discovery of wine, according to Peter Nick, a plant biologist at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany and one of the study's authors, would have far-reaching effects because it was one of the first commodities to be traded internationally. It is fair to say that domesticating grapevines was one of the main factors in the development of civilization.

The study by the whole team of researchers was recently published in the journal Science.

Wine Grapes and Table Grapes

Archaeologists, who convey the history of that time in history through seeds and traces of wine in broken pottery, have long dominated research into grape domestication.

Genomic analysis is a relatively new method for piercing the prehistoric fog, a time when postglacial climate warming occurred, the number of people rose, and cultures flourished.

Domesticated grapes are self-fertilizing and hermaphrodites. The study of modern plants and their genetic heritage revealed a shift in gene flow that occurred around 11,000 years ago and indicated that early farmers had chosen hermaphroditic grapevines.

A surprising new report, however, has revealed a surprising new development in the narrative: Two different lineages of wild grapes were domesticated.

Both incidents happened at roughly the same time, one in western Asia and the other in the Caucasus, which includes present-day Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan. The distance between the two areas exceeds 600 miles. Chen pointed out that the two distinct domestications might be explained by human migration or cultural exchanges.

Unexpectedly, those table grapes were later crossed with wild grapes to produce the wine-producing grapes that are now grown throughout much of western Europe and Asia, including the well-known wineries along the Mediterranean, The Washington Post reports.