Biogeography of crop progenitors and wild plant resources in the terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene of West Asia, 14.7–8.3 ka

2025 · doi:10.32942/x2dd27
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This study reconstructed the paleodistributions of 65 West Asian plant species, finding that crop progenitors and wild food species were concentrated in the Levant and surrounding areas during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition, with reduced niche sizes compared to today.

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The paper reconstructs the past spatial distributions of 65 plant species—including crop progenitors and wild food plants—associated with early agricultural archaeological sites in West Asia during the terminal Pleistocene to Early Holocene (14.7–8.3 ka). It uses ecological niche modelling trained on present-day species distributions against climate and environmental variables, then applies the models to palaeoclimate simulation outputs to derive predicted past potential niches; model performance was good on independent contemporary test data, but predictions of species occurrence at archaeological sites were more variable, which the authors attribute to underestimation of species’ fundamental niches. Most species are predicted to have been more geographically restricted under past climate conditions, with crop progenitors and several wild food species concentrated in the Levant (and to a lesser extent Cyprus and Western Anatolia), consistent with these regions acting as glacial refugia, while niche sizes shrank by ~25% on average from the terminal Pleistocene to the Early Holocene. The paper does not explicitly discuss endometriosis or adenomyosis; it was included in the corpus via a keyword match in the upstream search index.

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Abstract

This paper presents the first continuous, spatially-explicit reconstructions of the palaeodistributions of 65 plant species found regularly in association with early agricultural archaeological sites in West Asia, including the progenitors of the first crops. We used machine learning to train an ecological niche model of each species based on its present-day distribution in relation to climate and environmental variables. Predictions of the potential niches of these species at key stages of the Pleistocene–Holocene transition could then be derived from these models using downsampled data from palaeoclimate simulations. Our models performed well against independent contemporary test data, but their ability to predict the occurrence of specific species at archaeological sites was much more variable, probably reflecting a tendency of the method to underestimate the species’ fundamental niche. Nevertheless, the majority of species are predicted to have had more restricted geographic distributions under past climate conditions compared to today. Crop progenitors and several wild food species modelled are modelled to have been concentrated in the Levant and, to a lesser extent, Cyprus and Western Anatolia, suggesting these regions may have served as glacial refugia. The average size of species’ niche shrunk by an average of c. 25% from the terminal Pleistocene to the Early Holocene, indicating that economically significant plants were adapted to cryo-arid conditions and did not, as often assumed, initially respond positively to the ‘ameliorated’ climate of the Holocene.
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Abstract

This paper presents the first continuous, spatially-explicit reconstructions of the palaeodistributions of 65 plant species found regularly in association with early agricultural archaeological sites in West Asia, including the progenitors of the first crops. We used machine learning to train an ecological niche model of each species based on its present-day distribution in relation to climate and environmental variables. Predictions of the potential niches of these species at key stages of the Pleistocene–Holocene transition could then be derived from these models using downsampled data from palaeoclimate simulations. Our models performed well against independent contemporary test data, but their ability to predict the occurrence of specific species at archaeological sites was much more variable, probably reflecting a tendency of the method to underestimate the species’ fundamental niche. Nevertheless, the majority of species are predicted to have had more restricted geographic distributions under past climate conditions compared to today. Crop progenitors and several wild food species modelled are modelled to have been concentrated in the Levant and, to a lesser extent, Cyprus and Western Anatolia, suggesting these regions may have served as glacial refugia. The average size of species’ niche shrunk by an average of c. 25% from the terminal Pleistocene to the Early Holocene, indicating that economically significant plants were adapted to cryo-arid conditions and did not, as often assumed, initially respond positively to the ‘ameliorated’ climate of the Holocene. DOI https://doi.org/10.32942/X2DD27 Subjects Desert Ecology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology

Keywords

Ecological Niche Modelling, species distribution modelling, palaeoenvironment, West Asia Dates Published: 2025-10-17 13:12 Last Updated: 2026-02-05 09:52 Older Versions License CC BY Attribution 4.0 International Additional Metadata Data and Code Availability Statement: The data and R code used to produce this study is archived with Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14629984. Modelled palaeodistributions in raster format (.TIF) can be found in the same repository. Language: English

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