DNA Analysis Proves Indigenous Cultivation of Beaked Hazelnut

 

Scientists have studied the DNA of a native hazelnut in order to analyze how Indigenous peoples stewarded their land. The use of the beaked hazelnut (Corylus Cornuta) by indigenous peoples for food, medicine, craftmanship, and more has survived in oral traditions, so the study set out to investigate how the genetic profile of the hazelnut aligned with this knowledge. The hazelnuts were collected across western North America and the DNA of the specimens were analyzed. They mapped out the geographic distribution of plants sharing these genetic traits as well. It was discovered that people were transplanting and cultivating hazelnuts over long distances from their origin. They were selectively managing them, enabling the increase of genetic diversity within the hazelnut. Also, by analyzing specific unique hazelnut clusters only present in certain areas, they were able to support Indigenous land claims in those areas.

In my opinion this study is of great importance to understanding the behaviors of Indigenous peoples in the past. It was believed before that Indigenous peoples did not cultivate or steward the land they lived on, and this study brings a wider appreciation of Indigenous cultures and their behaviors. We are able to better understand how Indigenous settlers influenced genetic diversity within the land. We are able to learn more about how these cultures practiced environmental sustainability, giving us a better understanding of their values and motivations as a society. This study helps restore knowledge that was lost over time and by colonizing settlers who separated the Indigenous peoples from their land and cultures.

Farming and its Effect on Dogs

Dogs were domesticated around 15,000 years ago, and as companions to hunter-gatherers ate a lot of meat and extra food not eaten by the humans that they traveled with. As farming emerged in human culture, the genome of the dog began to be transformed. More starch-filled foods were integrated into the human diet, prompting a demand for adaptations in both humans and dogs in the digestion of foods containing starchy grains like wheat and millet. 

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/163677767684446630/

Eric Axelsson, an evolutionary geneticist, and his colleagues discovered that domesticated dogs have four to thirty copies of the Amy2B gene, a gene that helps digest starch. Wolves and wild dogs only have two of the Amy2B gene, suggesting that the change in the dogs genome had to do with starch consumption. To further study this discovery, scientists such as Morgane Ollivier and Ecole Normale Supeieure de Lyon collaborated with Axelsson to study DNA extracted from the bones of dogs and wolves from 7000 and 5000 year old archaeological sites. They discovered that these domestic dogs also had many of the Amy2B gene; they had eight compared to the much lower number of the Amy2B found in non-domesticated dogs and wild wolves. This indicated that the increase in the Amy2B gene was not just due to modern dog-breeding, but to the effects of farming. More recent research conducted this year also supports this research. This adaptation has allowed dogs to continue to be a big part of human life.

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/11/how-farming-changed-dog