Join the Asian and Middle East Studies Program as we host Robert Spengler from the Max Planck Institute (Jena, Germany) to discuss his new book: "Fruit from the Sands: The Silk Road Origins of Food We Eat."
Join via Zoom.
The foods we eat have a deep and often surprising past. Many foods we consume today-from almonds and apples to tea and rice-have histories can be traced along the tracks of the Silk Road out of prehistoric Central Asia to European kitchens and American tables. Balancing a broad array of archaeological, botanical, and historical evidence, Fruit from the Sands presents the fascinating story of the origins and spread of agriculture across Inner Asia and into Europe and East Asia. Through the preserved remains of plants in archaeological sites, Robert N. Spengler III identifies the regions where our most familiar crops were domesticated and follows their routes as people carried them around the world. Vividly narrated, "Fruit from the Sands" explores how the foods we eat have shaped the course of human history and transformed consumption all over the globe.
Robert Spengler is the paleoethnobotany lab director at the Max Planck Institute in Jena, Germany, director of the FEDD Project (Fruits of Eurasia: Domestication and Dispersal), funded by the European Research Council, and co-PI on the Arcadia Fund Project, MAPSS (Mongolian Archaeological Project: Surveying the Steppe).