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Via Maju's blog and Dorian K. Fuller et al., Across the Indian Ocean: the prehistoric movements of plants and animals. Antiquity 2012 three maps showing some movement of species and ideas between India (or South-East Asia) and Africa:
It has been known for many years that some of the major crops of the drier regions of India, such as sorghum (Sorghum bicolor), pearlmillet (Pennisetum glaucum) and fingermillet (Eleusine coracana), originated in Africa and arrived in India at some point in prehistory (e.g. Possehl 1986; Fuller 2003). A popular argument has been that these crops arrived in the Harappan urban period (2600–2000 BC), brought by Harappan ‘seafarers’ (e.g.
Possehl 1997), but there is little firm evidence to support this. Recent re-assessments, of both botanical identifications and archaeological context (Fuller & Madella 2001; Fuller 2003), leave reason to doubt the few grains reported from the Harappan urban period; in contrast, there is now a large accumulation of evidence for these crops in India from the second millennium BC, including finds from 33 sites (Figure 1, right inset).What the dating evidence currently suggests is that this transfer of African crops took place at the end of the Harappan era, perhaps as the urbanHarappan civilisation was undergoing its transformative de-urbanisation process (see Ratnagar 2000;Madella & Fuller 2006). Given the lack of any other material evidence for Harappan or South Asian contacts with the Red Sea or Africa
before 2000 BC, we have argued that this transfer took place primarily between north-east Africa and/or Yemen and western India, probably outside of the context of the Bronze Age trade between major civilisations (Boivin & Fuller 2009).
Moving in the other direction was the Asian broomcorn millet (Panicum miliaceum), ultimately of Chinese origin, which had left China on westward trade routes by c. 2200 BC (Frachetti et al. 2010). Broomcorn millet is known from other central Asian sites from around 2000 BC and is found in Pakistan at c. 1900 BC, Yemen at around 2000 BC, and in Sudanese Nubia by c. 1700 BC (Figure 1, left inset), while being absent from intervening regions such as Egypt and Mesopotamia (Fuller & Boivin 2009). Zebu cattle may also have moved from India to Yemen and East Africa starting at this time, although this was presumably the first stage in an ongoing process of gene flow through introduced bulls which made the genetic landscape of south Arabian and African cattle one of hybridity between African taurine and Indian zebu stocks, with evidence for interbreeding most marked at the margins of the Indian Ocean (Hanotte et al. 2002; Ibeagha-Awemu et al. 2004). These zebu-hybrid cattle played an important role in the longterm success and southernmost spread of cattle pastoralists in eastern Africa (cf. Marshall 1989).
It has been known for many years that some of the major crops of the drier regions of India, such as sorghum (Sorghum bicolor), pearlmillet (Pennisetum glaucum) and fingermillet (Eleusine coracana), originated in Africa and arrived in India at some point in prehistory (e.g. Possehl 1986; Fuller 2003). A popular argument has been that these crops arrived in the Harappan urban period (2600–2000 BC), brought by Harappan ‘seafarers’ (e.g.
Possehl 1997), but there is little firm evidence to support this. Recent re-assessments, of both botanical identifications and archaeological context (Fuller & Madella 2001; Fuller 2003), leave reason to doubt the few grains reported from the Harappan urban period; in contrast, there is now a large accumulation of evidence for these crops in India from the second millennium BC, including finds from 33 sites (Figure 1, right inset).What the dating evidence currently suggests is that this transfer of African crops took place at the end of the Harappan era, perhaps as the urbanHarappan civilisation was undergoing its transformative de-urbanisation process (see Ratnagar 2000;Madella & Fuller 2006). Given the lack of any other material evidence for Harappan or South Asian contacts with the Red Sea or Africa
before 2000 BC, we have argued that this transfer took place primarily between north-east Africa and/or Yemen and western India, probably outside of the context of the Bronze Age trade between major civilisations (Boivin & Fuller 2009).
Moving in the other direction was the Asian broomcorn millet (Panicum miliaceum), ultimately of Chinese origin, which had left China on westward trade routes by c. 2200 BC (Frachetti et al. 2010). Broomcorn millet is known from other central Asian sites from around 2000 BC and is found in Pakistan at c. 1900 BC, Yemen at around 2000 BC, and in Sudanese Nubia by c. 1700 BC (Figure 1, left inset), while being absent from intervening regions such as Egypt and Mesopotamia (Fuller & Boivin 2009). Zebu cattle may also have moved from India to Yemen and East Africa starting at this time, although this was presumably the first stage in an ongoing process of gene flow through introduced bulls which made the genetic landscape of south Arabian and African cattle one of hybridity between African taurine and Indian zebu stocks, with evidence for interbreeding most marked at the margins of the Indian Ocean (Hanotte et al. 2002; Ibeagha-Awemu et al. 2004). These zebu-hybrid cattle played an important role in the longterm success and southernmost spread of cattle pastoralists in eastern Africa (cf. Marshall 1989).