Iberian Magpie (1 Viewer)

occasional · Nov 26, 2016

There is a second hand account in Spanish of another study (which seems to be a university thesis) here

http://www.vertebradosibericos.org/aves/trofico/cyacootr.html

It does suggest that a missing component of the diet may be earthworms.

John Cantelo · Nov 26, 2016

Nutcracker said:
Long-cultivated plants are actually harder to track; Pinus pinea has been cultivated for ~6,000 years - probably one of the earliest cultivated plants of any (along with Date Palm, Wheat, and a few others from the Med region). One difficulty is distinguishing between traded seed, and seed grown locally, in the archaeological record. With pines, there's the additional problem that the pollen can't be identified to species level, and macrofossils are rare as they don't tend to grow in habitats that favour fossilisation.

Interesting. I had in mind that evidence of cultivated plants might turn up on archaeological sites with a regularity that might allow their spread to be tracked whilst non-useful introduced species would not be found at sites of human habitation (where most archaeology is conducted). However, your point regarding the impossibility of distinguishing traded plants from local produce is a good one. Thanks.

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