Riuln~ical.journal
o/ the
Linnean Socie!y ( I990), 39: 7- 16
3. Vavilov's concept of centres of origin of
cultivated plants: its genesis and its influence
on the study of agricultural origins
D. R. HARRIS
Department of Human Environment, Institute
31 -34 Gordon Square, London M'Cl H OPT
OJ' Archaeology,
UniversiQ College London,
N. 1. L'avilov first published his concept of centres of origin of cultivated plants in 1926. k'or over
fifty years i t p r o h i i d l y influrncrd thinking about this origins aiid sprrad of agriculture by I)otanists,
grographers, anthropologists and archaeologists. 'The genesis of ttir concept and its exposition by
Vavilov is examined, and its influenre on thr ideas of such scholars as C. 0 . Saurr, I. H. Burkill,
C, D. Darlington, A. I. Kuptsov, R. l ' o r t h s , J. K. Harlan a i d J . G . Hawkes is traced. I t is
concluded that Vavilov's cmccpt, which Ibr so long conditioucd ideas about the origins o f
agriculture, has now outlivcd its usefulness in that k l d of study.
KKY \VORDS: Agricultural origins
-
cultivated plants
-
history of ideas
-
N . I. Vavilo\.
CON'I'ENTS
Introduction .
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
7
Genesis of the concept .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Vavilov's rxposiriori of the concept .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Influerice of the concept on study of the origins of agriculturr .
. . . . . . . 11
Conclusion
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
15
Rcfcreurcs.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
15
IN'I'R0L)UC~TION
N. I. Vavilov's concept of centres of origin of cultivated plants, which he first
proposed in 1926, had a profound effect o n subsequent study of the origins of
agriculture. It is therefore appropriate to mark the centenary of his birth by
examining the genesis, and influence, of that seminal concept. The aim in doing
so is to trace a current of intellectual history, which, stemming from Vavilov
himself, came to permeate the thinking of the many botanists, geographers,
anthropologists, and archaeologists who, during and since Vavilov's time, sought
to understand how agriculture originated and spread.
In this paper attention is focused on three phases in the development of
Vavilov's concept: first, its intellectual history prior to 1926; second, its
exposition by Vavilov in and after 1926; and third, its subsequent influence on
students of the origins of agriculture, especially those outside the Soviet Union.
0024-4066/90/010007+ 10 S03.00/0
7
1990 'l'lir Linncan Society of 1,ondoii
8
D. R. HARRIS
GENESIS OF THE CONCEPT
The starting point for any examination of Vavilov’s concept must be his wellknown Studies on the Origin of Cultivated Plants, first published in Russian and
English, in Leningrad, in 1926 (hereafter referred to simply as Studies). Although
he had proposed his ‘Law of Homologous Series’ in 1922, it was in Studies that he
first explicitly discussed, as a topic in its own right, “the geographical centres of
the origin of cultivated plants.” By then he had already gained extensive field
experience in western Asia (Persia, Afghanistan and Turkestan) on the earlier of
his many plant-collecting expeditions. The question therefore arises as to
whether his formulation of the concept of centres of origin stemmed directly from
his field experience, or whether he owed a significant intellectual debt to
previous scholars.
The most reliable way of trying to resolve that question is to examine the
authors whom Vavilov himself cites in the 1926 publication. If one does so,
Alphonse De Candolle clearly emerges as the pioneer to whom Vavilov pays his
scholarly respects-indeed, Studies is dedicated to De Candolle’s memory. Both
De Candolle’s famous publication of 1882, Origine des Plantes Cultiue‘es, and his
earlier Ge‘ographie Botanique Raisonne‘e of 1855, are cited, and the value of De
Candolle’s contribution is assessed, in the first few pages (143-146) of Vavilov’s
book. Darwin is also mentioned as having been “interested in the problem of the
origin of cultivated plants”, but, not surprisingly, Vavilov regards De Candolle’s
work as the more directly relevant to his own.
Vavilov credits De Candolle with having been the first author “to distinguish
the origin of species [of cultivated plants] belonging to the New World and the
Old World” (p. 146), but he goes on to criticise
“The very method, used by De Candolle and othrr authors to determine the native country of a
cultivated plant !y its occurrence in a certain locality in wild conditions. This is not always reliable, firstly
because many species of cultivated plants are unknown outside cultivation, and secondly because the soralled ‘wild progenitors’ often represent narrow groups of rorms with a small number of varieties, often
isolated and unable to explain the whole diversity by which, as a rule, cultivated plants are represented,
the more so as by nature they are frequently wild relatives and not progenitors” (Vavilov’s italics).
Despite this trenchant criticism of De Candolle’s assumption that the
distribution of the assumed wild ancestors and wild relatives of the cultivated
species indicate the “native country” of the latter, Vavilov clearly acknowledges
De Candolle’s pioneering attempt to determine areas of origin: it is De
Candolle’s method he rejects, not his aim. Vavilov does not, however, explicitly
attribute to De Candolle the concept of centres of origin, although De Candolle
does use the term in the first edition of his Origine des plantes cultivbes (1882).
Many other authors are cited by Vavilov in the Russian version of Studies,
most of whom are referred to for their substantive contributions to knowledge of
particular crops. But among the citations in the introduction are several authors
of more general works, such as Hehn (1911), Sturtevant (1919) and Cook
(1925). The paper by Cook, entitled ‘Peru as a center of domestication’ is of
particular interest because in it Cook employs the concept of primary and
secondary centres of domestication of plants (and animals). H e does not
attribute the concept to any other author and makes no reference to Vavilov or
indeed any other biologist, although he strongly advocates a biological approach
to the study of domestication, arguing that “To locate the primary centers of
domestication as definitely as possible would appear to be the first step in a
VAVILOV’S CONCEPT OF CENTRES OF ORIGIN
9
biological investigation of the conditions and stages of human progress in
prehistoric times” (p. 35). As Cook’s paper was published only one year before
Studies, it seems unlikely that it directly influenced Vavilov while he was
formulating his own concept of centres of origin of cultivated plants, but there is
a marked parallelism in their thinking.
Still more interesting is Vavilov’s reference, at the end of the first chapter of
Studies, to Willis’ famous, mainly botanical treatise, Age and Area, which had been
published in 1922. Vavilov is careful to distinguish between primary and
secondary centres of diversity by pointing out that some groups of plants may
exhibit greater varietal diversity in areas distant from the primary centres in
which they originated. “Investigations of a considerable number of cultivated
plants have”, he suggests “shown very definitely that the process of evolution
went on [continued] in time and space”, so that “Geographical data about
varietal diversity of cultivated plants are not contradicting, in general, the
principal propositions of Willis’ theory about the role played by age and area of
distribution in the geographic evolution of cultivated plants” (1926: 152). This
quotation demonstrates Vavilov’s familiarity with Willis’ age and area
hypothesis and his interest in its apparent confirmation of some of his own
observations. Indeed, Vavilov’s reasoning seems to have paralleled Willis’
closely in that he postulated that, provided the mutation rate in, and the
selection factors operating on, a species or other biological group remained
constant, then the longer the plant had existed in a given area the wider would
be its distribution. But this does not necessarily imply that Vavilov was in any
direct sense indebted to Willis for the concept of centres of origin as such.
The extent to which Vavilov was influenced by the earlier students of plant
distribution whose work he cites remains uncertain. De Candolle is the only such
author whose ideas he evaluates in any detail, and my own tentative conclusion
is that his intellectual debt to his predecessors, in formulating the concept of
centres of origin, is relatively slight compared with the generalizations he arrived
at himself by 1926 on the basis of his already extensive, and intensive, field
observations.
VAVILOV’S EXPOSITION OF THE CONCEPT
Among those aspects of Vavilov’s concept of centres of origin which influenced
subsequent students of the beginnings of agriculture, his definition, and
portrayal in map form, of geographical centres of origin had the most direct and
pervasive effect on the later development of the subject. T h e first map of the
centres appears in Studies (fig. 7) and shows a total of five centres: south-western
Asia, south-eastern Asia, the Mediterranean, Abyssinia, and a New World centre
focusing on the Mexican-Peruvian region. Vavilov emphasizes that this map is
the result of “preliminary investigations of several tens of plants” (p. 241), and
he already suggests that a sixth centre is likely to have to be delineated in island
South-east Asia which, however, “is not yet sufficiently studied” (p. 242). H e
also anticipates the establishment of a series of secondary centres, looks forward
to defining the principal centres with greater geographical accuracy, and makes
the prescient comment that “at the same time it must be borne in mind that a
series of plants as hemp, rye, were simultaneously introduced into cultivation in
different places” (p. 243). I t is at this point in the text, too, that he makes his
10
D. R . H A R R I S
only reference to any other map-that of 0. Drude published in 1887V which
corresponds at all to his own, commenting in a footnote (p. 243) that Drude’s
map is a compilation of data which refer to the close of the nineteenth century
and that his own map differs sharply, in method and result, from Drude’s.
Two other aspects of Vavilov’s concept are of particular relevance to
understanding its influence on later students of the origins of agriculture. The
first is his argument that the homelands of cultivated plants and of “primeval
agriculture” are to be found in mountainous districts (1926: 218-220), and the
second is his equation of the centres of origin of cultivated plants with “the
principal homesteads of human culture” ( 1926: 244).
Vavilov first discussed the relationship he had observed between varietal
diversity and mountainous topography in Chapter 4 of Studies (pp. 2 18-220),
which is, significantly, entitled “The mountainous districts as the home of
agriculture”. In it he argues that the observed concentration of varietal diversity
in mountainous regions is not just the result of the variety of environmental
conditions; “the important part played by historical facts” is, he maintains, just
as, or even more, significant. H e explicitly refutes the then orthodox assumption
that plant cultivation began in the great river valleys which cradled the ancient
civilizations of the Old World (as does Cook, much more briefly, 1925: 40), and,
in a passage which shows remarkable foresight and which deserves to be quoted
in full, he suggests that:
“When rcflccting on the process of thc dcvrlopmrnt of agrirulturc, we must nerds rrcognizc, that ihc
prriod of great cultures, uniting populations made u p of many tribes, was prcrrtlrd by anothrr prriad
when separate trihcs and small groups of pi~pulationsIrd a n isolatrd lifr in shrltrrcd mnuntainoiis
districts. ‘Ihe taming and conquest of great rivers, as the Nilr, the ’l’igris, the Euphrates and others,
rrquired a n iron and drspotic organization building dikrs, regulating ovcrflowitig watcrs, in a wort!
organized puhlic works which thr primitive agriculturalists of Northern Africa and South-Western Asia
could not dream of. I t is very prohablr, thrrrforr, that mountainous districts, being the crntrrs of
varictal diversity, wcrr also the homr of primrval agriculture” (Vavilov, 1926: 219).
The extent of Vavilov’s interest in the historical implications of his botanical
work is indeed impressive. In the conclusion to Studies he makes the bold claim
that “In locating the centres where the cultivated plants have originated we
come near to establishing the principal homesteads of human culture” and goes
on to argue eloquently for a recognition of the great antiquity of agriculture:
“’l‘he history of thr origin of human culturr, and of agriculturr, is evidently more ancicnt than
uarrated by such rrcords as pyramids, inscriptions, basreliefs and tomhs. A thorough knowlrdgr of thc
rultivated plants with their multitude of varieties and thrir diflerrntiation into gcographical groups, not
unfrequaritly acronipanied by a markrd physiological distinctness dcterminrd by the impossiliility of
their bring crossed with onr another, makes us refer thr origin of thc cultivated plants to thc rcniotcst
past for which the usual archacological periods of fivr to tcn thousand ycars arc hut a short rcrm”
(p. 244).
The botanist, he claims, “is able to rectify the views of historians and
archaeologists”. He also comments with characteristic directness and conviction
on the question of whether the ancient civilizations developed independently of
one another: “The discussions as to whether the culture of Egypt is autonomic or
its elements were borrowed from Mesopotamia, or vice versa, the questions as to
the autonomy of Chinese and Indian culture, all this may be settled by
objectively investigating the varieties of cultivated plants” (p. 244). “Thus”, he
concludes, “the botanico-geographical analysis of cultivated plants enables us to
supplement the solution of the questions connected with the history of general
VAVILOV’S CONCEPT OF CENTRES OF O R I G I N
11
human culture, in particular with agriculture” (p. 245) and in this way “the
botanist is able to rectify the views of historians and archaeologists” (p. 244).
INFLUENCE OF THE CONCEPT ON STUDY OF THE O R I G I N S O F 4 G R I C U L T U K E
Vavilov’s concept of centres of origin of cultivated plants appears to have
influenced scholars in Western Europe and North America very little until after
the Second World War. It seems that his first map, of the five centres, had little if
any influence on scholars outside the Soviet Union, despite the fact that Studies
(in the Russian text of which it appears) included an English translation (in
which the map is referred to, although not reproduced, on p. 241). It was not
until 1945, when the first version of Vavilov’s map-which
by then he had
himself revised-appeared in an English publication, that the concept of centres
of origin began to exert a wider influence. In that year the first edition of C. D.
Darlington and E. K. Janaki Ammal’s Chromosome Atlas of Cultivated Plants was
published in Britain. It was dedicated to Vavilov and included, as an end piece,
a map of world centres of origin of cultivated plants based on Vavilov’s own
revision of his first map, which had been published in Russia in 1935. Darlington
and Janaki Ammal’s map showed ten main and two more diffuse centres (the
latter in Brazil-Paraguay and the USA). Then, in 1951, the issue of Chronica
Botanica which was devoted to a selection of Vavilov’s writings, translated into
English by K. Starr Chester, was published in the United States (Vavilov, 1951).
It too contained a version of Vavilov’s revised map: less clear than the original
five-centre map (mainly because it included altitudinal zones) and showing what
are now described in the text (p. 20) as “eight independent centres of origin”
with, additionally, three sub-centres, one in South-east Asia (the Indo-Malayan
Centre) and two in South America (the Chiloe Centre and the BrazilianParaguayan Centre).
Thus, from 1950 onwards, versions of Vavilov’s maps became widely available
to the English-reading world, and it is from that date that we can begin to
observe how the concept of centres of origin was adopted and adapted by
Western scholars. At the same time, colleagues of Vavilov within the Soviet
Union also began to adopt and modify his concept, notably P. M. Zhukovsky
and A. I. Kuptsov.
The first Western scholar to incorporate Vavilov’s centres of origin into a
of the origins of
comprehensive-if
highly speculative-interpretation
agriculture was the American cultural geographer, C. 0. Sauer, whose slim
on five Bowman Memorial
volume Agricultural Origins and Dispersals-based
Lectures that he gave at Columbia University in New York-was published in
1952. I t is worth examining how directly Sauer was influenced by Vavilov’s
work, because his beguilingly well written, but factually unsupported, synthesis
in its turn exerted a pervasive influence on a generation of younger American
geographers, anthropologists, archaeologists and even some botanists.
The intellectual framework of Sauer’s synthesis is provided by two linked
concepts: that of geographical foci, or, to use his preferred term, hearths, of
cultural innovation; and that of diffusion, which he regarded as the dominant
process in cultural development. Both of these concepts were central to the
thinking of German anthropogeographers in the late nineteenth century,
especially Carl Ritter and Friedrich Ratzel. Sauer acknowledges his debt to this
12
D. R. HARRIS
intellectual tradition when he refers to how “Ritter was impressed by the few
favored loci in which progressive ‘cultures arose and from which crops spread”
and how “Ratzel formulated the principle of diffusion as dominant over parallel
invention” (1952: 20).
Sauer was therefore already thinking in terms of geographically defined
cultural hearths before he became aware of Vavilov’s concept of centres of
origin. Just how and when he did so is not recorded, but there is an intriguing
aside in Agricultural Origins and Dispersals in which Sauer refers to a visit he
received from Vavilov “a quarter of a century ago” (p. 21). He does so when
expressing his scepticism of the idea that agriculture arose in the great river
valleys of the Near East, and his ready acceptance of Vavilov’s assurance that
“all the investigations of his group pointed to origins in hill and mountain
lands”. If the reference to “a quarter of a century ago” is precise, Vavilov would
have visited Sauer in 1927, the year after the publication of Studies, but we have
no means of knowing whether Sauer saw, then or later, the first five-centre
version of Vavilov’s map which had appeared in the Russian text of Studies. . . .
There is no doubt, however, that Vavilov’s emphasis on “mountainous districts
as the home of agriculture” entered into and reinforced Sauer’s maturing ideas
long before the Second World War. Nevertheless, Sauer did not formally
incorporate Vavilov’s centres as such into his conceptual scheme until after
Darlington and Janaki Ammal published their Chromosome Atlas o f Cultivated
Plants, with its modified version of Vavilov’s map, in 1945. I n fact, at the end of
Agricultural Origins and Dispersals we find a “Note on the Maps” which states
unequivocally that “The earliest design on which they [i.e. Sauer’s maps of
hearths of domestication] are based is Vavilov’s map of World Centers of Origin
of Cultivated Plants . . . revised by Darlington and Janaki”, with “additional
plant data. . ., domestic animals related to plant domestication, and inferences
made as to cultural dispersals” (p. 107). And, because the only publication of
Vavilov’s which Sauer himself cites is the 1951 issue of Chronica Botanica, and his
reference to Darlington and Janaki Ammal is to the 1950 edition, it may be that
Sauer was not aware of the actual geographical location of Vavilov’s centres
until as late as 1950.
It is clear that Vavilov’s influence on Sauer was strong and direct, and
because Sauer’s maps have often been regarded as much more conclusive than
he intended, and have been reproduced and modified all too frequently in
textbooks without the qualification Sauer himself attached to them, it is
appropriate to end this discussion of his position in the Vavilovian inheritance by
quoting that qualification: the maps are, he says, “work sheets to be revised as
better knowledge comes to hand of the evolution of man’s plants and animals, of
their remains recovered in archaeology, of their implications in different
cultures, of the climates, shorelines, and land surfaces of the prehistoric human
past” (pp. 106-107).
A few months after Sauer gave his Bowman Memorial Lectures in New York,
in January and February 1952, the English botanist, I. H. Burkill, delivered the
Hooker Lecture to the Linnean Society of London. Entitled “Habits of man and
the origins of the cultivated plants in the Old World”, Burkill included in his
masterly review of a huge geographical and historical canvas a detailed critique
of Vavilov’s centres of origin (Burkill, 1953: 15-22). He criticised Vavilov for
“taking the whole of his evidence from plants and disregarding the cultivator”,
VAVILOV’S CONCEPT OF CENTRES OF ORIGIN
13
especially in his claim “that the centres are all in mountains” (p. 15)’ arguing
that “Man . . . was more likely to succeed in making a cultigen on the margin of
a mountainous area than within it” (p. 17). H e then examined the distribution,
and especially the boundaries, of the eight centres that Vavilov had defined in
1935, argued that political boundaries (provided they are “firm”) represent
cultural discontinuities which act as barriers to the dispersal of cultigens, and
produced his own version of Vavilov’s Old World centres, including a
readjustment ofvavilov’s centres in southern and eastern Asia (1953: figs 2 & 4).
Burkill’s grand overview of the origins and spread of Old World cultivated
plants in some ways paralleled, although it did not directly influence, Sauer’s
contemporaneous synthesis of agricultural origins. However, Sauer was
thoroughly familiar with (and often spoke enthusiastically about) Burkill’s great
Dictionary of the Economic Products of the Malay Peninsula (1935), which, together
with Burkill’s 1951 paper on “The rise and decline of the greater yam in the
service of man”, is cited in Agricultural Origins and Dispersals and undoubtedly
contributed to Sauer’s advocacy of South-east Asia as the primary agricultural
hearth of the Old World.
The intellectual links traced between Vavilov, Sauer and Burkill demonstrate
clearly that the early 1950s represent a threshold in the trajectory of Vavilov’s
influence on Western scholars concerned with the beginnings of agriculture.
Another, slightly later, indication of this trend was the appearance in 1956 of the
first edition of C. D. Darlington’s book on Chromosome Botany which included a
brief discussion of Vavilov’s centres of diversity, referred to Burkill’s papers, and
sketched the history of selected crops.
Within the Soviet Union some of Vavilov’s former colleagues also took up and
modified his ideas after his death. T h e most influential of them was P. M.
Zhukovsky, who was for many years Director of the Institute of Plant Industry
in Leningrad, and who published in his retirement a revision of Vavilov’s centres
(Zhukovsky, 1970). Zhukovsky proposed twelve “secondary gene megacentres”,
which include most of the world. They are essentially the vast areas in which
cultivated plants have been dispersed and in which much varietal diversity has
arisen. He also introduced the concept of “primary gene microcentres” which
are those areas that contain wild species genetically related to the cultigens. His
revision of Vavilov’s centres is more a statement about the distribution of gene
pools for plant breeding than a n explicit contribution to the study of agricultural
origins, but by expanding Vavilov’s centres to megacentres and distinguishing
them from microcentres he usefully emphasized the important distinction
between centres of origin in the strict sense and areas or regions of diversity.
However, Zhukovsky’s scheme had relatively little influence on Western
scholars, despite the fact that an English translation of it was issued in 1975 by
the N. I. Vavilov Institute of Plant Industry in Leningrad.
In contrast, the work of another Russian colleague of Vavilov, A. I. Kuptsov,
had a somewhat greater influence outside the Soviet Union. This can be traced
to the second edition of C. D. Darlington’s textbook on Chromosome Botany and the
Origins of Cultivated Plants which appeared in 1963 and contained a reference to a
paper by Kuptsov published in Russian in 1955. In this paper Kuptsov revised
Vavilov’s centres in two ways that relate directly to the origins and spread of
agriculture: he distinguished between primary regions of agriculture which were,
with one interesting exception, the same as Vavilov’s centres, and much larger
14
D R HARRIS
secondary agricultural regions in which agriculture had developed by the time of
the great navigations (i.e. AD 1500). The exception among the primary regions
is tropical West Africa, which does not appear as a centre on any of Vavilov’s
own maps. It is described by Kuptsov as the Nigerian region, but he denies it the
status of “neolithic” which he accords to all the other primary regions.
Darlington included a version of Kuptsov’s classification and map in the 1963 and
1973 editions of Chromosome Bolany and so helped both to perpetuate Vavilov’s
concept of centres of origin and to publicize Kuptsov’s transformation of it into a
map of the origins and spread of agriculture.
Kuptsov’s injection of tropical West Africa into his otherwise Vavilovian
distribution pattern of regions of origin, echoes Sauer’s earlier inclusion of the
same area as a “subordinate center” in his scheme (1952: 34-35), and it also
prompts mention of the pioneer work of the French botanist, R. Portkres,
who-as
early as 1950-proposed four primary “cradles of agriculture” in
tropical Africa (Portkres, 1950, 1962). He states quite explicitly that his aim is to
apply Vavilov’s method of research to Africa in order to reconstruct the
continent’s “geographical cradles of ancient agriculture”; and he goes on to
suggest that a “cradle” rnay be delineated where several culturally differentiated
areas, each characterized by a particular pattern of crop variability, are
superimposed, the implication being that here agriculture is assumed to have
been anciently established. O n this basis he recognizes his four cradles of
agriculture: the Nilo-Abyssinian region, and Western, Eastern, and Central Africa.
Mention of Portkres’ contribution nearly concludes this exploration of the
Vavilovian intellectual inheritance. Several other Western botanists, for example
D. Zohary (1970), have published critiques of Vavilov’s concept of centres of
origin, but these tend not to focus on its applicability to study of the origins of
agriculture. There is, however, one important exception to that generalization:
J. R. Harlan’s revision of Vavilov’s scheme which he published in 197 1 under the
provocative title of “Agricultural origins: centers and non-centers”. In this paper
Harlan argued that only three of Vavilov’s centres merit recognition as true
centres, in the sense that agriculture originated independently in each of them,
and he suggested that the remaining Vavilovian centres (with the exception of
the Mediterranean, Central Asiatic and Indian centres which disappear from the
map) are, with their boundaries extended in tropical Africa and South America,
better designated as three non-centres. These tropical non-centres are conceived
as extensive areas of diffuse crop origins, each of which is at least loosely linked
by diffusion to its nearest subtropical or temperate centre to the north; thus the
African non-centre is tributary to South-west Asia, the South-east Asian noncentre to North China, and the South American non-centre to Mexico.
I n proposing his apparently radical revision of Vavilov’s centres, Harlan
followed the conventional view that the ancient “nuclear” centres of civilization
in the Near East, North China, and Mexico are also the centres of earliest
agriculture in the world. This led him to make a sharper distinction between
centres and non-centres than the evidence of the crops alone merits. Indeed, the
distinction rests essentially on the contrast of spatial scale between centres and
non-centres and on the presumption that agriculture emerged earlier in the
former than the latter: a presumption that, despite its persistence in the literature
on agricultural origins, cannot be validated on the basis of presently available
archaeological evidence.
VAVILOV’S CONCEPT OF CENTRES OF O R I G I N
15
The most recent modification of Vavilov’s concept of centres of origin is J. G.
Hawked scheme published in 1983, in which he clarified the confusion which
persisted for so long between centres in which agriculture is believed to have
emerged very early, and areas of high crop-plant diversity. H e refers to the first
as “nuclear centres of agricultural origins” and to the second as “regions of
diversity” (1983: 7 1). He further assumes that the regions of diversity “developed
later when farming had spread out from the nuclear centres in which i t
originated”; and he also identifies several outlying minor centres in which
agriculture is “probably of more recent origin” and in which “only a few crops
seem to have originated” (pp. 7 1-72). This scheme, which postulates four
nuclear centres, ten regions of diversity, and eight outlying minor centres, is the
most comprehensive modification of Vavilov’s original concept to be formulated,
and it marks the end of the trail of intellectual history that has been traced
through the six decades that have elapsed since the original publication of
Vavilov’s Studies on Ihe Origin of Cultiuated Plants.
CONCLUSION
Vavilov’s concept of centres of origin of cultivated plants has had such a
profound effect on students of the beginnings of agriculture that it remains very
difficult for anyone who takes a world view of agricultural origins to escape the
mental template of the Vavilovian pattern of centres. Indeed this point was
demonstrated recently when an archaeologist who claimed-incorrectly (Harris,
1987: 33-35)-to
have evidence for agriculture having been practised 18 000
years ago in southern Egypt simply added that area to a n overtly Vavilovian
map of world centres of earliest agriculture (Wendorf, Schild & Close, 1982).
Ever since Vavilov himself equated centres of crop diversity with the
homelands of agriculture there has been conceptual confusion between the two
phenomena. Despite the massive investment of archaeological effort that has
gone into investigations of early agriculture since 1950, we cannot be confident
that plants were domesticated and agriculture developed earlier in the so-called
nuclear centres than in other regions of the world. Many uncertainties attach to
the radiocarbon dates published as evidence of early agriculture, including many
of those relating to the remains of the crops themselves (Harris, 1986), and we
cannot confidently assert that agriculture is demonstrably older in the Near East,
North China, or Mexico than it is in South-east Asia, New Guinea, or Central
America (Harris & Hillman, 1989). It is time that we conceptually decoupled
the world pattern of crop-plant diversity that Vavilov so brilliantly
demonstrated from our investigations of the origins and early development of
agriculture. We need now to focus research on the evolutionary history of
individual crops and regional crop associations, and to adopt a more rigorous
approach to the identification and dating of archaeologically-recovered plant
remains. By this means we shall build more securely on Vavilov’s intellectual
inheritance and gain a better understanding of how and when agriculture
emerged and developed in different regions of the world.
REFERENCES
BURKILL, I. H., 1935. A Dictionary ofthe Ecoaornic Products of
Agents for the Colonies.
tfce
Malay Peninsula. Vols I & 11. London: Crown
16
D. R. HARRIS
BURKILL, I. H., 1951. The rise and derline of the greater yam in the service of man. The Advancement of
Science, London, 7: 443-448.
BURKILL, 1. H., 1953. Habits of man and the origins of the cultivated plants of the Old World. Proceedings of
the Linnean Sociely of London, 64: 12-42.
COOK, 0. E., 1925. Peru as a center of domestication. Journal offferedity, 16: 3 3 4 6 & 95-1 10.
DARLINGTON, C . D., 1963, 1973. Chromosome Botany and the Origins oJCultiuated PLank 2nd edn (1963).3rd
edn (1973). London: George Allen & Unwin.
DARLINGTON, C. D. & JANAKI AMMAL, E. K., 1945. Chrunosone Atlas of Cultivated Plants. London:
George Allen & Unwin.
DE CANDOLLE, A., 1855. Ge‘ographie Botanique Raisonnb ou Exposition des Faits Principaux et des Lois Concernant la
Distribution Ge‘ographique des Plantes de 1‘Epoque Actuelle. Vols I & 11. Paris: Masson.
DE CANDOLLE, A,, 1882. Origine des flantes Cultiue‘es. Paris: Germer Bailliere.
DRUDE, O., 1887. Atlas der PJanzenuerbreitung. Gotha: Justus Perthes (see Plate VIII: Nahrungs- und
Genusspflanzen, Kulturzon der Erde, 2 Karten).
HARLAN, J. R., 197 I . Agricultural origins: centers and noncenters. Science, 174: 468-474.
HARRIS, D. R., 1986. Plant and animal domestication and the origins of agriculture: the contribution of
radiocarbon accelerator dating. In J . A. J. Gowlett & R . E. M. Hedges (Eds), Archaeological Resultsfrom
Acceleiator Dating: 5-12. OxTord: Oxford University Committee for Archaeology Monograph Series No. 1 1 .
HARRIS, D. R., 1987. The impact on archaeology of radiocarbon dating by accelerator mass spectrometry.
Philosophical Tranractions of the Royal Society, London, A 323: 23-43.
HARRIS, D. R . & HILLMAN, G. C. (Eds), 1989. Foraging and Farming: the Buolution of Plant Exploitation.
London: Unwin Hyman.
HAWKES, J. G., 1983. The Diuenity oJCrop Plants. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
HEHN, V., 191 1. Kulturp~anzenund Haustiere in ihrem ubergang aus Asien nach Griechenland und Italien sowie in das
ubrige Europa. 8 Auflage. Berlin: Gebriider Borntracger. Mit botanischen Beitragen von A. Engler und F.
Pax.
KUPTSOV, A. I., 1955. Geographical distribution of cultivated flora and its historical development. Bulletin of
the All-Union Geggraphical Society, 87: 22&231. [In Russian.]
PORTERES, R., 1950. Vieilles agricultures africaines avant le XVI‘”‘ siecle. Berceaux d’agriculture et centres
de variation. L’A~ronomie Trobicale.
,
, 5: 489-507.
PORTERES, R., 1962. Berceaux agricoles primaires sur le continent africain. Journal of African Hzstory, 3:
195-2 10.
SAUER, C. O., 1952. Agrzcultural Origins and Dispersals. New York: American Geographical Society.
STURTEVANT, E. L., 1919. In U . P. Hedrick (Ed.), Sturtevant’s Notes on Edible Plants. Albany: J. B. Lyon
(State of New York, Department of Agriculture, Twenty-seventh Annual Report, Vol. 2, Part 11).
VAVILOV, N. I., 1926. Studies on the Origin of Cultivated Plants. Leningrad: Institut Botanique Appliqui. et
d’Am6lioration des Plantes.
VAVILOV, N. I., 1951. The origin, variation, immunity and breeding of cultivated plants (translated from
the Russian by K. Starr Chester). Chronica Botanica, 13: i-xviii & 1-364.
WENDORF, F., SCHILD, R . & CLOSE, A. E., 1982. An ancient harvest on the Nile. Science 82: 68-73.
WILLIS, J. C., 1922. Age and Area. A Study in Geographical Distribution and Origin of Species. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
ZHUKOVSKY, P. M., 1970. (1975). World gene pool of plantsfor breeding. Mega-genecenters and endemic microgenecenters. [In Russian.] Leningrad: Publishing House “Nauka”, Leningrad Division. (English translation,
1975. Leningrad: N. I . Vavilov Institute of Plant Industry).
ZOHARY, D., 1970. Centers of diversity and centers of origin. I n D. H. Frankel & E. Bennett (Eds), Genetic
Resources in Plants their Exploration and Cunservaliont 33-42. Oxford: Blackwell Scientific Publications.