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The Age of Seeds
How Plants Hacked Time and Why Our Future Depends on It
Fiona McMillan-Webster
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eBook - ePub
The Age of Seeds
How Plants Hacked Time and Why Our Future Depends on It
Fiona McMillan-Webster
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About This Book
Plants evolved seeds to hack time. Thanks to seeds they can cast their genes forward into the future, enabling species to endure across seasons, years, and occasionally millennia.When a 2000-year-old extinct date palm seed was discovered, no one expected it to still be alive. But it sprouted a healthy young date palm.That seeds produced millennia ago could still be viable today suggests seeds are capable of extreme lifespans.Yet many seeds, including those crucial to our everyday lives, don't live very long at all. In The Age of Seeds Fiona McMillan-Webster tells the astonishing story of seed longevity, the crucial role they play in our everyday lives, and what that might mean for our future.
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PART I
EXTREME LONGEVITY AND THE STRANGENESS OF SEEDS
CHAPTER 1
A date with history
When it comes to plants, it takes a lot to astonish someone like Elaine Solowey. The California-born horticulturist has spent decades living and working in the hot, arid expanse of Israelâs remote Arava Valley â one of the most inhospitable environments in the world, replete with temperature extremes, saline soil and low rainfall. At Kibbutz Ketura, near the southern end of the valley, Solowey spends much of her time tending extensive fruit orchards and other crops. She establishes healthy soil where she can, a slow and painstaking process in such an eroded landscape. In fact, as an expert in desert agriculture with an affinity for botanical challenges, Solowey often has any number of experiments on the go, mostly with wild plant varieties. She wants to see what might thrive, with a bit of coaxing, in a place like this. Already she has grown evergreen neem trees from India, and rare Tibetan loquats. She has even managed to sprout the near-threatened Boswellia sacra, famed for its production of frankincense resin and an exasperating reluctance to germinate. In short, Solowey has spent more than forty years revitalising the desert by inches â reclaiming the land, as she puts it, âfrom the dust, the heat and the saltâ. Under her care, she has seen plants defy remarkable odds. She is no stranger to the difficult, the unlikely, and even the downright improbable. But one time, she was completely thrown for a loop by a single seed.
In January 2005, a scientist named Sarah Sallon arrived at Kibbutz Ketura with a very unusual delivery. Sallon is the director of the Louis L. Borick Natural Medicine Research Center at the Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem in Jerusalem, and she had worked with Solowey on a few projects relating to medicinal plants over the years. Now here she was with a handful of unusually large date palm seeds that looked like theyâd seen better days. Sallon explained that these were no ordinary seeds. They had been discovered during an excavation at Masada, one of the most historically significant archaeological sites in Israel. And they were nearly 2000 years old. Given their age and the location where theyâd been found, it was likely they were seeds of the long-extinct Judean date palm.
Sallon had convinced archaeologists and archaeobotanists at Bar-Ilan University in Jerusalem to part with a few seeds from their Masada collection so she could give them to Solowey, who knew a thing or two about date palms. Date crops of the commercial Medjool variety help generate income for Kibbutz Ketura, so Solowey had grown and harvested many in her time. Solowey concluded that Sallon had brought these seeds as an interesting souvenir. Sallon, however, had something different in mind. She wanted Solowey to plant them.
âYou want me to do what?â Solowey had asked, incredulously.
âI want you to try to sprout these seeds,â Sallon repeated, explaining she had a gut feeling that some of these seeds were still alive.
Solowey was unconvinced. They were talking about a time span of nearly two millennia, after all. But Sallon was persuasive. Solowey eventually agreed to help, promising only to do her best. Still, she couldnât imagine that seeds this old could be any more capable of sprouting a date palm than a shard of pottery found at the same site. It was harder still to imagine what it would mean to reach into the depths of botanical extinction and bring back, of all things, a Judean date tree.
*
Just before Passover in 70 CE, as Jerusalemâs residents prepared feasts and the streets swelled with pilgrims, the Romans attacked. For three months, the walled city was surrounded and under siege. Itâs said that the Roman general Titus ordered every tree within 15 kilometres cut down for the construction of a siege wall in order cut off supplies, as well as any means of escape. Many nearby crops were destroyed and whatever remained could not be reached. No seeds could be sown, no crops tended â nothing grew, nothing was harvested. Within the city, the situation became increasingly desperate. Fight, submit or starve? No one could agree. Infighting led, catastrophically in one instance, to the burning of most of the cityâs food stores. By August, the Romans had breached Jerusalemâs famed walls and, with brutal finality, burned the Second Temple. Of the many thousands of Judeans who died during the siege, most succumbed to starvation. It was, in the end, one of the deadliest summers in antiquity.
In Rome, they celebrated. A new coin was minted to commemorate the occasion, with the insignia âJUDAEA CAPTAâ (âJudea capturedâ) encircling an image of a woman mourning beneath a date palm, the latter being a well-known symbol of Judea. But Judea had not been entirely conquered, not quite yet. Remarkably, some rebels had escaped and found their way to the fortress of Masada.
Perched high on an isolated plateau between the harsh expanse of the Judean desert and the lifeless shallows of the Dead Sea, Masada was a fierce marriage of geology and architecture set within a hostile wilderness. The plateau on which it was built rises an imposing 450 metres, within view of the Dead Seaâs salt-crusted shoreline. It was defended by 1300 metres of high stone walls, beyond which jagged cliffs plunged into barren ravines. In the first century CE it was connected to the world by only a few thin, treacherous paths. To those fleeing here, it must have seemed as though theyâd reached the end of the world. And in a sense, they had. It was only possible to shelter and survive in a place like this if you were well supplied. Fortunately for the rebels, Masada was kitted out nicely.
When King Herod the Great ordered construction of the fortress to begin in 35 BCE, he had been hedging his bets. As the Roman-appointed king of Judea, he was neither trusted nor accepted by the Jewish people. With enemies everywhere, a remote desert fortress seemed like a good backup plan â especially a stronghold where Herod could live comfortably with family and friends in the event of a drawn-out insurrection. And so it was that, in addition to the defensive walls and towers, Masadaâs original builders had constructed ample living quarters, Roman baths with a central furnace, an administrative building, and an opulent three-tiered palace descending the northern cliff.
The âHanging Palaceâ was an extravagance, of course. Masadaâs true value lay in its storage facilities. An elaborate network of channels and small dams had been built to catch both stormwater and winter floodwaters, both of which were priceless. The water was collected in a series of massive cisterns, some with a capacity of 4000 litres, that had been dug into the rocky foundation. It was said to be so effective that a single dayâs rain could provide water for a thousand people for at least two years.
Masada also possessed a large complex of storerooms, many of which were used for food storage. These, too, were well designed and benefited from the uniquely dry and salty environment afforded by Masadaâs proximity to both the Judean desert and the Dead Sea. As the story goes, when the rebels first arrived, they found perfectly preserved dates and other foodstuffs left by those who had resided there in the final stages of construction nearly a century earlier. According to the scribe Josephus, who would chronicle what came to pass at Masada, the rebel population grew to 967 in the two years immediately following the fall of Jerusalem: supplies were sorely needed.
As the archaeologist Jodi Magness describes in her book Masada: From Jewish Revolt to Modern Myth, despite its impressive infrastructure, daily life at the fortress would have been harsh, and a great deal of energy would have been dedicated to procuring, storing and preparing food. The Judeans built and tended gardens at Masada but even small-scale agriculture must have been challenging on that dusty, sun-bleached mesa. Other supplies were not so far away â Date palms grew surprisingly well near the otherwise barren coast of the Dead Sea, and the variety of dates they produced were nutritious, amenable to storage and very nice to eat, and a little further up the Jordan Valley where the land was more fertile, there was barley, wheat, legumes and figs. Yet it would have been increasingly treacherous to venture from the relative safety of Masada as the Romans drew ever closer.
In the centuries leading up to the rebelsâ final days at Masada, dates had become one of the most important crops in Judea. This wasnât so unusual. At the time, date palms were grown across the entire region extending from North Africa up through the Middle East. Prized for their ability to grow in hot, dry environments, date palms were cultivated in Egypt, on the island of Cyprus, and in Ionia, which is now the western coast of present-day Turkey. Date palm groves also skirted the northern curve of the Arabian Sea and could be found as far east as the Indus Valley, in what is now southern Pakistan.
Dates, in their numerous varieties, were an important source of nutrients. They were eaten fresh and dried, smashed into paste, and used to make date cakes and date porridge, date honey and date wine. The archaeological record is filled with such recipes and serving suggestions. The rest of the tree was highly valued, too, and used in its entirety. The trunks were used in the construction of buildings and boats, as well as in carpentry and fencing. Date palm logs fuelled fires for warmth and cooking, and bronzesmiths were sometimes known to use date stones in lieu of charcoal. The fronds were used as brooms and fans, and for thatching roofs. The long fibrous leaflets were woven into ropes, fish nets, baskets and sleeping mats. The list goes on. Indeed, in the first century BCE, the Greek geographer Strabo wrote of an old Persian song that listed 360 uses for date palms.
An ancient poem titled The Assyrian Tree, which originated in Parthia, now part of Iran, is told in part from a palm treeâs perspective as she lists her many attributes to a foe, a rather unimpressed goat. The scene takes place in Xwanirah, which at the time referred to the central continent in the known world.
In Xwanirah land there is no tree of my build.
For the king eats of me when I newly bear fruit.
I am shipsâ planking; I am the mast for sails.
They make brooms of me which put in order house and home.
They make pestles of me which pound barley and rice.
They make fans of me for the fires.
I am shoes for farmers; I am sandals for the barefoot âŚ
In summer I am shade for the heads of governors.
I am milk for farmers, honey for noblemen.
They make boxes of me for medicines.
They carry (these) province to province, physician to physician.
I am a nest for little birds, shade for wanderers.
I cast down my stones; they grow on fresh ground.
If people allow, so they do not harm me, my top will be green until the day eternal.
And those persons who lack bread and wine eat fruit from me till they become filled.
Date palms, it seems, were central to the daily functioning of a vast swathe of the ancient world. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they achieved widespread cultural status. For thousands of years, the date palm appeared in mythology and sacred texts where it was, by turn, a symbol of prosperity, fertility and immortality. A date palm represented the Mesopotamian goddess Mylitta and her Phoenician counterpart Astarte. Egyptians decorated murals and columns with date palms to signify life and longevity. Indeed, the hieroglyphic for âyearâ was an image of a single date palm branch. According to some versions of a Greek legend, the gods Artemis and Apollo were born beneath the boughs of a date tree.
And yet, not all date palms were considered equal. Of the numerous varieties, those that grew in Judea â in what is today southern Israel â were the most popular. The dates they produced were renowned for their good flavour and large size, with some reaching 11 centimetres in length. Judean dates made better honey and better wine than did other dates. The famed Greek physician Hippocrates praised Judean dates for their medicinal qualities. So, too, did the Roman physician Galen. Even the Babylonian Talmud mentions a date variety named âTaaliâ, which was cultivated in Babylon and Judea. These dates were said to heal, strengthen and purge the body.
Perhaps the real key to the popularity of Judean dates was their long shelf life, which provided a critical economic advantage. According to records from the time, dates grown in Egypt and Cyprus were soft and sweet when eaten fresh but did not store well, often becoming rotten when transported. The slightly drier Judean dates not only tasted better, they lasted. They could be stored for months on end and endured long-haul passage â remarkable considering the slow, halting pace of ancient international shipping at that time. This meant the dates could be transported further down the Nile to Cairo and Thebes, as well as to Anatolia (Turkey), mainland Greece and as far as Rome itself.
Intriguingly, Judean dates primarily grew in three specific areas in the Jordan Valley: Ein Gedi on the western coast of the Dead Sea, Jericho near the northern shore, and Beit Sheâan, which lies further north towards the Sea of Galilee. Ancient geographers, physicians and botanists noticed that the salty soil of the valley and the Dead Sea environment most likely had something to do with it. There were attempts to grow this cultivar elsewhere, but the plants just didnât take. With trees producing a bounty of dates every growing season, grove owners prospered and planted more and larger groves. According to Strabo, groves in the vicinity of Jericho extended over 100 stadia (17 kilometres). In fact, Jericho had such an abundance of these crops that it was often referred to as the City of Dates or the City of Palms.
Such a source of wealth did not escape the Romansâ attention, of course, and while control of the date trade was not their primary reason for first conquering Judea, it was most certainly a significant benefit. Access to the delicacy itself didnât hurt either. Once Judea was under Roman rule, its dates were regularly served at the emperorâs table. In 35 BCE, while the first bricks were being laid at Masada, the Roman politician Mark Antony gifted Jericho â plantations and all â to his lover Cleopatra VII of Egypt. Cleopatra, ever the shrewd strategist, leased it back to King Herod in return for a hefty cut of Jerichoâs profits. The date trees were far more than a valuable commodity to the Judeans, however. Only dates grown in Jericho, Ein Gedi and elsewhere in the Jordan Valley were carried to the temples and offered reverently as First Fruits. Date palm leaves, which came to symbolise peace and sanctity, were used in holy rituals and featured during religious observances and festivals. And ultimately, at a time when siege warfare was commonplace, Judean dates offered a chance for survival.
By the first century CE, the Roman army, known more for its twin talents of engineering and destruction than its horticultural nous, saw little point in seizing the vast and valuable date groves of Judea, and instead chose to decimate this central feature of the regionâs economy. Date palms were burned in their thousands. Some groves were spared but few people remained who knew how to tend them â most had been exiled or killed.
Certainly, cultivating dates requires a lot of work and specialised knowledge. Date palms are flowering plants â they reproduce sexually. The overwhelming majority of flowering plants have bisexual flowers, meaning they possess both male and female reproductive structures in the same flower. A rose, for example, has a pollen-producing male structure called a stamen, as well as a female pistil that produces ovules. By contrast, around 10 per cent of flowering plants have uni-sexual flowers, which are either male or female. Some of these are monoecious, which means they produce distinct male and female flowers that both grow on the same individual plant. Corn, which is a monoecious flowering plant, produces both male and female flowers on the same stalk. The rest are dioecious plants, where the male and female flowers grow on entirely separate individual plants. Around 6 per cent of all flowering plants are dioecious, palm trees among them. Thus, any given palm tree, including any given date palm tree, is either male or female. Only the female trees produce fruit.
Ancient cultivators learned how to determine which trees were male and which were female. They needed to know when and how to collect pollen from male flowers and use it to manually fertilise female flowers, and when to harvest the dates. Moreover, while date trees can be grown from seeds, propagation by planting a palmâs early offshoots was a more productive and common practice. So farmers needed to know which offshoots were ready, how to remove them without killing them, which conditions were best for planting, and how to tend the growing trees. This knowledge likely took centuries to amass and would have been passed down within families and in local communities.
After the fall of Masada around 74 CE, Judean dates were still harvested for a few hundred years, but nowhere near previous levels â these were just echoes of what had come before. And as the region endured further waves of conquests, knowledge of Judean date palm farming faded away. By the 11th century, the ancient Judean cultivar was most likely extinct. Historical accounts from the 19th century reveal that date groves in Israel consisted mainly of wild trees or low-quality seedlings and the fruit was described subsequently as âbadâ and ânot fit for ordinary consumptionâ.
*
Israeli archaeologist Yigael Yadin and his team arrived at Masada in the early 1960s and found a scene of devastation preserved in dust and salt and ash. Masada had certainly burned, though not all of it. Among the rubble and the charred debris, the scientists found broken pottery and shields, arrows, silver shekels (coins) and remnants o...