Tibet and Barley

choi

How Tibet was won  | The Barley Mow; The settlement of Tibet depended on an exotic crop from the West. Economist, Nov 22, 2014.
www.economist.com/news/science-a ... rop-west-barley-mow
(Humans "failed to establish themselves above 3,000 metres until about 3,600 years ago. * * *

Note:
(a) How the West Was Won
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_the_West_Was_Won
(the earliest in this Wiki page is "Bing Crosby album) (1959)")
(b) "a paper just published in Science, by CHEN Fahu 陈发虎 and DONG Guanghui 董广辉 of Lanzhou University * * * shows * * * A new crop [barley] not only allowed people to colonise the highest reaches of Tibet, but let them do so at a time when the weather was actually getting colder."

Chen FH et al, Agriculture Facilitated Permanent Human Occupation of the Tibetan Plateau After 3600 BP. Science, _: _  (online publication Nov 20, 2014)
www.sciencemag.org/lookup/doi/10.1126/science.1259172

(c)
(i) The Economist: "The clue is in the crops. Sites below the crucial contour line are dominated by millet. Those above it are dominated by barley. Though barley has a longer growing season than millet, it is more tolerant of the cold. Barley was part of a farming revolution that happened in the Middle East as millet and rice were spreading in China."
(ii) Alexandra Witze, Barley Fuelled Farmers' Spread Onto Tibetan Plateau; Cold-tolerant crop enabled high-altitude agriculture some 3,600 years ago. Nature,
Nov 20, 2014 (in the "News and Comment" section).
www.nature.com/news/barley-fuell ... tan-plateau-1.16382
("Millet was domesticated in China but is sensitive to frost. Barley and wheat, from the Middle East’s Fertile Crescent, are hardier. * * * a 4,000-year-old site with the oldest known evidence for barley on the plateau")

* There is no need to read the rest of the Nature News report.
* barley
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barley
(Barley grain is a staple in Tibetan cuisine and was eaten widely by peasants in Medieval Europe; In a 2007 ranking of cereal crops in the world, barley was fourth both in terms of quantity produced and in area of cultivation; section 2.1 Domestication)