Apples have made their way all around the world, but where did they originate? In this post, you will find the YouTube video exploring the archaeology of apples, and a full video transcript (with relevant sources and links).
YouTube Video
YouTube Video Transcript
Here, you will find the complete transcript of the video in the previous section with hyperlinked references/citations.
Intro
In the late 1930s, Japanese researchers hand-pollinated Red Delicious apple flowers with pollen from Ralls Janet apples. Their goal was to create an apple that tasted good and could grow well in Japan. However, WW2 interrupted these efforts, but research started again in the 1950s. Though the resulting seedlings of that initial hand pollination dwindled during the war years, there was still a decent number left and 596 of them eventually bore fruit. In 1955, fruits from one of the planted seedlings caught the eye of researchers and that’s how the Fuji apple came to be.
Now if we step back and think about the Fuji apple’s origins, it was clearly born in Japan; however, it’s “parents” – the Red Delicious and Ralls Janet apples actually came from the USA. And while apples are currently the most popular fruit in the United States, they didn’t originate there either.
In fact, apples have made their way all around the world and their journey is a fascinating one.
Hi, I’m Dr. Smiti Nathan, and I’m an archaeologist. In this video, we’ll be exploring the globe-trotting archaeology of apples, so let’s get into it.
Origins
So, you might be asking, “So where do apples come from?”
This is a little complicated. If you “Google”: “Where did the apple first come from?”, you will probably see “Kazakhstan” pop-up, perhaps even the Tian Shan mountains. This is due to fairly recent genetic data, but there’s more to it.
You see in 2010, researchers sequenced the entire apple genome, and it was only the 10th plant that had been entirely sequenced at that time – so apples are kind of a big deal. Then, in 2017, a major study sequenced over a hundred apple genomes to essentially help map out their “family history” – and that’s where things get interesting – at least for us.
The researchers found that the modern apple primarily descends from Malus sieversii, which is a wild apple species native to Kazakhstan and elsewhere across Central Asia. Now when you’re trying to figure out the origins of a domestic plant – you typically look for its wild ancestor.
However, when it comes to apples, there are a number of wild apple species. For example, the European crab apple, or Malus sylvestris, is a wild apple native to Europe and typically produces small, sour fruits.
That same study that showed that modern apples primarily descend from Malus sieversii also showed that Malus sylvestris–the European crabapple – provided significant genetic contributions.
So you might be wondering, “What’s going on here?”
Basically, while the modern apple was likely first domesticated from wild apples in Kazakhstan, as it traveled throughout the world – its genetic makeup was influenced by other wild apples, which significantly contributed to the modern apples that we have today.
Modern apple species is broadly known as Malus domestica and its genus, Malus, is pretty large. Most modern apples are actually hybrids of many apple species. Now when it comes to the apples that you can get in the grocery store today, like Gala, Granny Smith, Golden Delicious, and, yes Fuji too, these are different varieties of the species Malus domestica.
So there are a lot of apples.
Collecting Wild Apples
Now when it comes to archaeology, we know that long before apples were cultivated by humans, people collected wild apples for various purposes.
For example, wild apple remains have been recovered at a number of Neolithic sites in Switzerland. Scholars think that such wild apples were likely gathered by people in this area at this time and were part of their diet in some capacity.
At a tomb site at Ur in lower Mesopotamia, archaeologists have also found approximately 6,000-year-old dried apples threaded on string. The archaeologists working at this site believe that these apples may have been offerings. And, since apples likely didn’t grow wild in the hot, arid climate of Mesopotamia, these apples may have been traded across long distances.
Now when it comes to Central Asia, apple archaeobotanical evidence is a bit limited to date.
In Kazakhstan, 7 seeds were recovered from a Medieval mosque site in the Talas Valley in southern Kazakhstan. Now we weren’t able to get a hold of the original study, but other archaeologists mentioning that study said they were either apple or pear seeds. In terms of older sites in Kazakhstan, there is a possible seed from the site of Tuzusai, which dates to roughly 410 to 150 cal. B.C.E.
If we look elsewhere in Central Asia, in Turkemenistan, there was a possible Malus seed from the the site of Gonur, which dates to 2500-1700 BCE. In Uzbekistan, at the medieval site of Tashbulak, 13 possible Malus seeds were recovered; however, the researchers point out that it’s hard to tell if these were wild or cultivated apples or if they are truly apples, as the seeds could belong to another plant like pears.
Now, you may be thinking, “what do you mean the seed remains could be apple or pear?”
Well, it’s pretty common for archaeobotanists to not always be able to identify plant remains they find at sites to a specific species. This is partly because of preservation–seeds may be damaged in a way that distinctive characteristics are not visible. It is also partly because many seeds of different species look similar–like, in this case, pear and apple seeds. It’s common for archaeologists to identify plant remains to just a genus or family.
So while we might not yet have found a lot of carbonized seeds in the archaeological record of Central Asia, this region was a huge part of the apple’s history and helped the apple travel throughout the world.
Hybridization & The Silk Road
In fact, genetic studies demonstrate evidence that trade along the Silk Road was a major factor in the domestication and spread of the apple. As you may remember from some other videos on this channel, the Silk Road was a trade network that crisscrossed Asia and Europe, and it seems to have been in existence as early as 3500 BCE.
From Kazakhstan, traders brought apples to East Asia. Along the way, growers hybridized the wild apple with wild crab apples from Siberia, and the Caucasus, resulting in the creation of thousands of different apple varieties.
Now, in order to create these hybrid apples, growers often relied on an important technique – grafting. Grafting basically involves fusing two different plant parts together. For trees, this often entails combining the roots of one tree with the top of another, which grow together to make one tree.
It’s not exactly known when grafting was invented. Scholars have hypothesized that there might have been grafting in ancient Mesopotamia, Persia, and Egypt, but we don’t have direct evidence for this. We have some textual sources from a little over 2000 years ago that mention grafting in ancient Greece and Rome, as well as indirect textual references of grafting in ancient China.
Grafting is often preferred over growing fruit trees from seeds because you get more control over the fruit’s taste and texture. While grafting has been used with many different fruit trees, it revolutionized the history of the apple, and enabled growers to more effectively breed apples.
Now you might be asking, “why didn’t they just plant apple seeds?”
The answer is heterozygosity. Plants that are heterozygous–like apples–have high genetic variability. Remember the Japanese researchers who planted those hybrid apples? They literally had hundreds of different types of apple trees – with only one being the Fuji apple.
In other words, if you plant a seed from a Fuji apple you get at the grocery store, you might be able to grow a tree–but that tree likely won’t contain those same Fuji apples that you got at the grocery store. Instead, it might produce other apple varieties that could be tiny, green, or even super sour. On the other hand, if you plant a seed from a homozygous plant–let’s say, a pea–you know exactly what you’ll get. This is why grafting is important for heterozygous plants–when you avoid growing from seed, the fruit is much more predictable.
Spread & Europe
So, in the wake of grafting technology, the globe-trotting apple spread west to Europe. Apples were introduced as part of a suite of food plants around 2000 years ago during the Roman occupation of central Europe. In Europe, apple growers hybridized apples with native species, including the European crabapple.
Apple remains from the Roman period, which was about 1,500-2,000 years ago, have been identified archaeologically at over 30 sites across central Europe. Scholars suggest that apples were a luxury item when they were first introduced, and eventually, farmers in central Europe began cultivating them more widely, along with some other fruits like pears, plums, and cherries.
In fact, at a garden in a Roman villa near Pompeii, archaeologists recovered a carbonized apple, which was still two-thirds intact. Given its small size, it may be an example of a native crab apple rather than a domesticated apple, but it’s not exactly known.
Now Pompeii was one of the cities that was covered by ash and lava following the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 CE. A ton of archaeological work has been conducted there, and archaeologists have uncovered apple art across the city.
Roman apple art has also appeared in other places. For example, an approximately 2,000-year-old Roman-made statuette of Herakles holding the apples of Hesperides, was found in Egypt.
Belief Systems
In fact, apple iconography has been intertwined with various belief systems. For example, in the Norse pantheon, the goddess Idunn is associated with apples and her apples are what give the Norse deities their eternal youth.
In Christianity, the apple is pretty iconic. The story of Adam and Eve describes them eating an unnamed fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and that fruit has often been depicted as an apple. But why is that the case?
Well, according to English Literature Professor Robert Appelbaum, it’s partly due to a punny Latin translation. Long story short, a 4th-century CE scholar named Jerome was tasked with translating the Hebrew Bible into Latin. When translating Adam and Eve’s fruit, he opted for the word, Malus, yes, the same name as the apple’s now scientific genus. In Jerome’s time, Malus could mean one of two things. As an adjective, it could mean bad or evil, which is actually the origin of the English word “malice”. Or as a noun, it could mean a fleshy-seed bearing fruit like a pear, fig, or an apple.
It was over a millennia after Jerome’s initial translation, that the apple seemed to become the fruit of choice in numerous Christian paintings. It even went on to appear in Christian-themed literary works like, John Milton’s poem, Paradise Lost.
Colonization & Cider
While Adam and Eve ate their fruit straight from the tree; in other places around the world, apples were cultivated for different consumption purposes. In some places, apples were pressed for juice and then fermented into apple cider. The exact origins and prevalence of cider production in antiquity are currently difficult to determine.
However, In the medieval period, we have records from France and England referencing cider and orchards, and while apples are mentioned at times, the exact fruit and fruit tree are not always clear in these documents. Europe’s cider production spanned centuries and as certain European nations colonized various regions of the world, they took apples and cider making traditions with them.
European colonizers introduced cultivated apples to places like New Zealand, Chile, and the US. When it comes to the US, it is home to native crabapple species – just like Europe. Apple orchards were common in early US farmsteads, especially in New England. Typically, these apples were made into cider, but they were also consumed in other ways.
Historic cookbooks from 19th-century New England include many recipes with apples as the star ingredient. For example, one 19th-century cookbook included a recipe for “Salem Applesauce” that was spiced up with sugar, nutmeg, butter, and rosewater.
Apple cultivation and production occurred for centuries throughout the Americas and became integrated into people’s lives and imaginations.
Many US children have been told the folk tale of Johnny Appleseed, which is about a man who roamed the US and altruistically planted apple seeds. This folk tale is based on a real person named John Chapman who did in fact plant apple seeds throughout the US in order to sell the seedlings and trees to fellow settlers. Chapman was against grafting due to his religious beliefs, which is why he opted to plant seeds. Now if you remember our discussion on heterozygosity, you know that Chapman didn’t know what kind of apples he would get from those seeds. In fact, his apples usually were not tasty enough to eat. Instead, they were often used to make – you probably can guess it – cider.
These days, farmers today grow about 100 apple varieties, and just a handful of those are commonly found in US grocery stores. However, some US growers are bringing back older heirloom apple varieties to preserve apple genetic diversity, bolster craft cider production, and to enjoy the taste of different types of apples.
Outro
From the mountains of Kazakhstan to grocery stores around the world, the apple’s journey spans centuries, continents, and cultures. Their journey has been anything, but straightforward; however, we know they’ve changed themselves and the people they’ve encountered along the way. In many places, they became intertwined in peoples’s diets, drinks, arts, and beliefs.
Now if you’re curious to see how another plant, shaped the lives of people in the past, check out this video here.
That’s all for this video, and we’ll catch you in the next one. Bye!
Credits
Anya Gruber: Researcher, Scriptwriter, Co-Producer
Noor Hanania: Lead Video Editor
Smiti Nathan: Director, Co-Producer, Support Video Editor, Scriptwriter
Brooke Norton: Co-Producer, Peer Reviewer
Sneh P. Patel: Peer Reviewer
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