Alphonse de Candolle
Origin of Cultivated Plants
3. Archæology and Palæontology. The most direct proof which can be conceived of the ancient existence of a species in a given country is to see its recognizable fragments in old buildings or deposits, of a more or less certain date.
The fruits, seeds, and different portions of plants taken from ancient Egyptian tombs, and the drawings which surround them in the pyramids, have given rise to most important researches, which I shall often have to mention. Nevertheless, there is a possible source of error; the fraudulent introduction of modern plants into the sarcophagi of the mummies. This was easily discovered in the case of some grains of maize, for instance, a plant of American origin, which were introduced by the Arabs; but species cultivated in Egypt within the last two or three thousand years may have been added, which would thus appear to have belonged to an earlier period. The tumuli or mounds of North America, and the monuments of the ancient Mexicans and Peruvians, have furnished records about the plants cultivated in that part of the world. Here we are concerned with an epoch subsequent to the pyramids of Egypt.
The deposits of the Swiss lake-dwellings have been the subject of important treatises, among which that of Heer, quoted just now, holds the first place. Similar works have been published on the vegetable remains found in other lakes or peat mosses of Switzerland, Savoy, Germany, and Italy. I shall quote them with reference to several species. Dr. Gross has been kind enough to send me seeds and fruits taken from the lake-dwellings of Neuchâtel; and my colleague, Professor Heer, has favoured me with several facts collected at Zurich since the publication of his work. I have already said that the rubbish-heaps of the Scandinavian countries, called kitchen-middens, have furnished no trace of cultivated vegetables.
The tufa of the south of France contains leaves and other remains of plants, which have been discovered by MM. Martins, Planchon, de Saporta, and other savants. Their date is not, perhaps, always earlier than that of the first lacustrine deposits, and it is possible that it agrees with that of ancient Egyptian monuments, and of ancient Chinese books. Lastly, the mineralogic strata, with which geologists are specially concerned, tell us much about the succession of vegetable forms in different countries; but here we are dealing with epochs far anterior to agriculture, and it would be a strange and certainly a most valuable chance if a modern cultivated species were discovered in the European tertiary epoch. No such discovery has hitherto been made with any certainty, though uncultivated species have been recognized in strata prior to the glacial epoch of the northern hemisphere. For the rest, if we do not succeed in finding them, the consequences will not be clear, since it may be said, either that such a plant came at a later date from a different region, or that it had formerly another form which renders its recognition impossible in a fossil state.
4. History. Historical records are important in order to determine the date of certain cultures in each country. They also give indications as to the geographical origin of plants when they have been propagated by the migrations of ancient peoples, by travellers, or by military expeditions.
The assertions of authors must not, however, be accepted without examination.
The greater number of ancient historians have confused the fact of the cultivation of a species in a country with that of its previous existence there in a wild state. It has been commonly asserted, even in our own day, that a species cultivated in America or China is a native of America or China. A no less common error is the belief that a species comes originally from a given country because it has come to us from thence, and not direct from the place in which it is really indigenous. Thus the Greeks and Romans called the peach the Persian apple, because they had seen it cultivated in Persia, where it probably did not grow wild. It was a native of China, as I have elsewhere shown. They called the pomegranate, which had spread gradually from garden to garden from Persia to Mauritania, the apple of Carthage (Malum Punicum). Very ancient authors, such as Herodotus and Berosius, are yet more liable to error, in spite of their desire to be accurate.
We shall see, when we speak of maize, that historical documents which are complete forgeries may deceive us about the origin of a species. It is curious, for it seems to be no one’s interest to lie about such agricultural facts. Fortunately, facts of botany and archæology enable us to detect errors of this nature.
The principal difficulty, which commonly occurs in the case of ancient historians, is to find the exact translation of the names of plants, which in their books always bear the common names. I shall speak presently of the value of these names and how the science of language may be brought to bear on the questions with which we are occupied, but I must first indicate those historical notions which are most useful in the study of cultivated plants.
Agriculture came originally, at least so far as the principal species are concerned, from three great regions, in which certain plants grew, regions which had no communication with each other. These are – China, the south-west of Asia (with Egypt), and intertropical America. I do not mean to say that in Europe, in Africa, and elsewhere savage tribes may not have cultivated a few species locally, at an early epoch, as an addition to the resources of hunting and fishing; but the great civilizations based upon agriculture began in the three regions I have indicated. It is worthy of note that in the old world agricultural communities established themselves along the banks of the rivers, whereas in America they dwelt on the high lands of Mexico and Peru. This may perhaps have been due to the original situation of the plants suitable for cultivation, for the banks of the Mississippi, of the Amazon, of the Orinoco, are not more unhealthy than those of the rivers of the old world.
A few words about each of the three regions.
China had already possessed for some thousands of years a flourishing agriculture and even horticulture, when she entered for the first time into relations with Western Asia, by the mission of Chang-Kien, during the reign of the Emperor Wu-ti, in the second century before the Christian era. The records, known as Pent-sao, written in our Middle Ages, state that he brought back the bean, the cucumber, the lucern, the saffron, the sesame, the walnut, the pea, spinach, the water-melon, and other western plants,13 then unknown to the Chinese. Chang-Kien, it will be observed, was no ordinary ambassador. He considerably enlarged the geographical knowledge, and improved the economic condition of his countrymen. It is true that he was constrained to dwell ten years in the West, and that he belonged to an already civilized people, one of whose emperors had, 2700 B.C., consecrated with imposing ceremonies the cultivation of certain plants. The Mongolians were too barbarous, and came from too cold a country, to have been able to introduce many useful species into China; but when we consider the origin of the peach and the apricot, we shall see that these plants were brought into China from Western Asia, probably by isolated travellers, merchants or others, who passed north of the Himalayas. A few species spread in the same way into China from the West before the embassy of Chang-Kien.
Regular communication between China and India only began in the time of Chang-Kien, and by the circuitous way of Bactriana;14 but gradual transmissions from place to place may have been effected through the Malay Peninsula and Cochin-China. The writers of Northern China may have been ignorant of them, and especially since the southern provinces were only united to the empire in the second century before Christ.15
Regular communications between China and Japan only took place about the year 57 of our era, when an ambassador was sent; and the Chinese had no real knowledge of their eastern neighbours until the third century, when the Chinese character was introduced into Japan.16
The vast region which stretches from the Ganges to Armenia and the Nile was not in ancient times so isolated as China. Its inhabitants exchanged cultivated plants with great facility, and even transported them to a distance. It is enough to remember that ancient migrations and conquests continually intermixed the Turanian, Aryan, and Semitic peoples between the Caspian Sea, Mesopotamia, and the Nile. Great states were formed nearly at the same time on the banks of the Euphrates and in Egypt, but they succeeded to tribes which had already cultivated certain plants. Agriculture is older in that region than Babylon and the first Egyptian dynasties, which date from more than four thousand years ago. The Assyrian and Egyptian empires afterwards fought for supremacy, and in their struggles they transported whole nations, which could not fail to spread cultivated species. On the other hand, the Aryan tribes who dwelt originally to the north of Mesopotamia, in a land less favourable to agriculture, spread westward and southward, driving out or subjugating the Turanian and Dravidian nations. Their speech, and those which are derived from it in Europe and Hindustan, show that they knew and transported several useful species.17 After these ancient events, of which the dates are for the most part uncertain, the voyages of the Phœnicians, the wars between the Greeks and Persians, Alexander’s expedition into India, and finally the Roman rule, completed the spread of cultivation in the interior of Western Asia, and even introduced it into Europe and the north of Africa, wherever the climate permitted.
Later, at the time of the crusades, very few useful plants yet remained to be brought from the East. A few varieties of fruit trees which the Romans did not possess, and some ornamental plants, were, however, then brought to Europe.
The discovery of America in 1492 was the last great event which caused the diffusion of cultivated plants into all countries. The American species, such as the potato, maize, the prickly pear, tobacco, etc., were first imported into Europe and Asia. Then a number of species from the old world were introduced into America. The voyage of Magellan (1520-1521) was the first direct communication between South America and Asia. In the same century the slave trade multiplied communications between Africa and America. Lastly, the discovery of the Pacific Islands in the eighteenth century, and the growing facility of the means of communication, combined with a general idea of improvement, produced that more general dispersion of useful plants of which we are witnesses at the present day.
5. Philology. The common names of cultivated plants are usually well known, and may afford indications touching the history of a species, but there are examples in which they are absurd, based upon errors, or vague and doubtful, and this involves a certain caution in their use.
I could quote a number of such names in all languages; it is enough to mention, in French, blé de Turquie, maize, a plant which is not a wheat, and which comes from America; in English, Jerusalem artichoke (Helianthus tuberosus), which does not come from Jerusalem, but from North America, and is no artichoke.
A number of names given to foreign plants by Europeans when they are settled in the colonies, express false or insignificant analogies. For instance, the New Zealand flax resembles the true flax as little as possible; it is merely that a textile substance is obtained from its leaves. The mahogany apple (cashew) of the French West India Isles is not an apple, nor even the fruit of a pomaceous tree, and has nothing to do with mahogany.
Sometimes the common names have changed, in passing from one language to another, in such a manner as to give a false or absurd meaning. Thus the tree of Judea of the French (Cercis Siliquastrum) has become the Judas tree in English. The fruit called by the Mexicans ahuaca, is become the avocat (lawyer) of the French colonists.
Not unfrequently names of plants have been taken by the same people at successive epochs or in different provinces, sometimes as generic, sometimes as specific names. The French word blé, for instance, may mean several species of the genus Triticum, and even of very different nutritious plants (maize and wheat), or a given species of wheat.
Several common names have been transferred from one plant to another through error or ignorance. Thus the confusion made by early travellers between the sweet potato (Convolvulus Batatas) and the potato (Solanum tuberosum) has caused the latter to be called potato in English and patatas in Spanish.
If modern, civilized peoples, who have great facilities for comparing species, learning their origin and verifying their names in books, have made such mistakes, it is probable that ancient nations have made many and more grave errors. Scholars display vast learning in explaining the philological origin of a name, or its modifications in derived languages, but they cannot discover popular errors or absurdities. It is left for botanists to discover and point them out. We may note, in passing, that the double or compound names are the most doubtful. They may consist of two mistakes; one in the root or principal name, the other in the addition or accessory name, destined almost always to indicate the geographical origin, some visible quality, or some comparison with other species. The shorter a name is, the better it merits consideration in questions of origin or antiquity; for it is by the succession of years, of the migrations of peoples, and of the transport of plants, that the addition of often erroneous epithets takes place. Similarly, in symbolic writing, like that of the Chinese and the Egyptians, unique and simple signs indicate long-known species, not imported from foreign countries, while complicated signs are doubtful or indicate a foreign origin. We must not forget, however, that the signs have often been rebuses, based on chance resemblances in the words, or on superstitious and fanciful ideas.
The identity of a common name for a given species in several languages may have two very different explanations. It may be because a plant has been spread by a people which has been dispersed and scattered. It may also result from the transmission of a plant from one people to another with the name it bore in its original home. The first case is that of the hemp, of which the name is similar, at least as to the root, in all the tongues derived from the primitive Aryan stock. The second is seen in the American name of tobacco, the Chinese of tea, which have spread into a number of countries, without any philological or ethnographic filiation. This case has occurred oftener in modern than in ancient times, because the rapidity of communications allows of the simultaneous introduction of a plant and of its name, even where the distance is great.
The diversity of names for the same species may also spring from various causes. As a rule, it indicates an early existence in different countries, but it may also arise from the mixture of races, or from names of varieties which take the place of the original name. Thus in England we find, according to the county, a Keltic, Saxon, Danish, or Latin name; and flax bears in Germany the names of flachs and lein, words which are evidently of different origin.
When we desire to make use of the common names to gather from them certain probabilities regarding the origin of species, it is necessary to consult dictionaries and the dissertations of philologists; but we must take into account the chances of error in these learned men, who, since they are neither cultivators nor botanists, may have made mistakes in the application of a name to a species.
The most considerable collection of common names is that of Nemnich, published in 1793.18 I have another in manuscript which is yet more complete, drawn up in our library by an old pupil of mine, Moritzi, by means of floras and of several books of travel written by botanists. There are, besides, dictionaries of the names of the species in given countries or in some special language. This kind of glossary does not often contain explanations of etymology; but in spite of what Hehn19 may say, a naturalist possessed of an ordinary general education can recognize the connection or the fundamental differences between certain names in different languages, and need not confound modern with ancient languages. It is not necessary to be initiated into the mysteries of suffixes or affixes, of dentals and labials. No doubt the researches of a philologist into etymologies are more profound and valuable, but this is rarely necessary when our researches have to do with cultivated plants. Other sciences are more useful, especially that of botany; and philologists are more often deficient in these than naturalists are deficient in philology, for the very evident reason that more place is given to languages than to natural history in general education. It appears to me, moreover, that philologists, notably those who are occupied with Sanskrit, are always too eager to find the etymology of every name. They do not allow sufficiently for human stupidity, which has in all time given rise to absurd words, without any real basis, and derived only from error or superstition.
The filiation of modern European tongues is known to every one. That of ancient languages has, for more than half a century, been the object of important labours. Of these I cannot here give even a brief notice. It is sufficient to recall that all modern European languages are derived from the speech of the Western Aryans, who came from Asia, with the exception of Basque (derived from the Iberian language), Finnish, Turkish, and Hungarian, into which, moreover, words of Aryan origin have been introduced. On the other hand, several modern languages of India, Ceylon, and Java, are derived from the Sanskrit of the Eastern Aryans, who left Central Asia after the Western Aryans. It is supposed, with sufficient probability, that the first Western Aryans came into Europe 2500 B.C., and the Eastern Aryans into India a thousand years later.
Basque (or Iberian), the speech of the Guanchos of the Canary Isles, of which a few plant names are known, and Berber, are probably connected with the ancient tongues of the north of Africa.
Botanists are in many cases forced to doubt the common names attributed to plants by travellers, historians, and philologists. This is a consequence of their own doubts respecting the distinction of species and of the well-known difficulty of ascertaining the common name of a plant. The uncertainty becomes yet greater in the case of species which are more easily confounded or less generally known, or in the case of the languages of little-civilized nations. There are, so to speak, degrees of languages in this respect, and the names should be accepted more or less readily according to these degrees.
In the first rank, for certainty, are placed those languages which possess botanical works. For instance, it is possible to recognize a species by means of a Greek description by Dioscorides or Theophrastus, and by the less complete Latin texts of Cato, Columella, or Pliny. Chinese books also give descriptions. Dr. Bretschneider, of the Russian legation at Pekin, has written some excellent papers upon these books, from which I shall often quote.20
The second degree is that of languages possessing a literature composed only of theological and poetical works, or of chronicles of kings and battles. Such works make mention here and there of plants, with epithets or reflections on their mode of flowering, their ripening, their use, etc., which allow their names to be divined, and to be referred to modern botanical nomenclature. With the added help of a knowledge of the flora of the country, and of the common names in the languages derived from the dead language, it is possible to discover approximately the sense of some words. This is the case with Sanskrit,21 Hebrew,22 and Armenian.23
Lastly, a third category of dead languages offers no certainty, but merely presumptions or hypothetical and rare indications. It comprehends those tongues in which there is no written work, such as Keltic, with its dialects, the ancient Sclavonic, Pelasgic, Iberian, the speech of the primitive Aryans, Turanians, etc. It is possible to guess certain names or their approximate form in these dead languages by two methods, both of which should be employed with caution.
The first and best is to consult the languages derived, or which we believe to be derived, directly from the ancient tongues, as Basque for the Iberian language, Albanian for the Pelasgic, Breton, Erse, and Gaelic for Keltic. The danger lies in the possibility of mistake in the filiation of the languages, and especially in a mistaken belief in the antiquity of a plant-name which may have been introduced by another people. Thus the Basque language contains many words which seem to have been taken from the Latin at the time of the Roman rule. Berber is full of Arab words, and Persian of words of every origin, which probably did not exist in Zend.
The other method consists in reconstructing a dead language which had no literature, by means of those which are derived from it; for instance, the speech of the Western Aryans, by means of the words common to several European languages which have sprung from it. Fick’s dictionary will hardly serve for the words of ancient Aryan languages, for he gives but few plant-names, and his arrangement renders it unintelligible to those who have no knowledge of Sanskrit. Adolphe Pictet’s work24 is far more important to naturalists, and a second edition, augmented and improved, has been published since the author’s death. Plant-names and agricultural terms are explained and discussed in this work, in a manner all the more satisfactory that an accurate knowledge of botany is combined with philology. If the author attributes perhaps too much importance to doubtful etymologies, he makes up for it by other knowledge, and by his excellent method and lucidity.
The plant-names of the Euskarian or Basque language have been considered from the point of view of their probable etymology by the Comte de Charencey, in Les Actes de la Société Philologique (vol. i. No. 1, 1869). I shall have occasion to quote this work, of which the difficulties were great, in the absence of all literature and of all derived languages.
6. The necessity for combining the different methods. The various methods of which I have spoken are of unequal value. It is clear that when we have archæological records about a given species, like those of the Egyptian monuments, or of the Swiss lake-dwellings, these are facts of remarkable accuracy. Then come the data furnished by botany, especially those on the spontaneous existence of a species in a given country. These, if examined with care, may be very important. The assertions contained in the works of historians or even of naturalists respecting an epoch at which science was only beginning, have not the same value. Lastly, the common names are only an accessory means, especially in modern languages, and a means which, as we have seen, is not entirely trustworthy. So much may be said in a general way, but in each particular case one method or the other may be more or less important.
Each can only lead to probabilities, since we are dealing with facts of ancient date which are beyond the reach of direct and actual observation. Fortunately, if the same probability is attained in three or four different ways, we approach very near to certainty. The same rule holds good for researches into the history of plants as for researches into the history of nations. A good author consults historians who have spoken of events, the archives in which unpublished documents are found, the inscriptions on ancient monuments, the newspapers, private letters, finally memoirs and even tradition. He gathers probabilities from every source, and then compares these probabilities, weighs and discusses them before deciding. It is a labour of the mind which requires intelligence and judgment. This labour differs widely from observation employed in natural history, and from pure reason which is proper to the exact sciences. Nevertheless, when, by several methods, we reach the same probability, I repeat that the latter is very nearly a certainty. We may even say that it is as much a certainty as historical science can pretend to attain.
I have the proof of this when I compare my present work with that which I composed by the same methods in 1855. For the species which I then studied, I have now more authorities and better authenticated facts, but my conclusions on the origin of each species have scarcely altered. As they were already based on a combination of methods, probabilities have usually become certainties, and I have not been led to conclusions absolutely contrary to those previously formed.
Archæological, philological, and botanical data become more and more numerous. By their means the history of cultivated plants is perfected, while the assertions of ancient authors lose instead of gaining in importance. From the discoveries of antiquaries and philologists, moderns are better acquainted than the Greeks with Chaldea and ancient Egypt. They can prove mistakes in Herodotus. Botanists on their side correct Theophrastus, Dioscorides, and Pliny from their knowledge of the flora of Greece and Italy, while the study of classical authors to which learned men have applied themselves for three centuries has already furnished all that it has to give. I cannot help smiling when, at the present day, savants repeat well-known Greek and Latin phrases, and draw from them what they call conclusions. It is trying to extract juice from a lemon which has already been repeatedly squeezed. We must say it frankly, the works which repeat and commentate on the ancient authors of Greece and Rome without giving the first place to botanical and archæological facts, are no longer on a level with the science of the day. Nevertheless, I could name several German works which have attained to the honour of a third edition. It would have been better to reprint the earlier publications of Fraas and Lenz, of Targioni and Heldreich, which have always given more weight to the modern data of botany, than to the vague descriptions of classic authors; that is to say, to facts than to words and phrases.