The Tropical Turn: Agricultural Innovation in the Ancient Middle East and the Mediterranean

From rice and cotton to citruses and cucumbers, this book chronicles the earliest histories of familiar tropical Asian crops in the ancient Middle East and the Mediterranean. Drawing on archaeological materials and textual sources in over seven ancient languages, The Tropical Turn unravels the breathtaking anthropogenic peregrinations of these familiar crops from their homelands in tropical and sub-tropical Asia to the Middle East and the Mediterranean, showing the significant impact South Asia had on the ecologies, dietary habits, and cultural identities of peoples across the ancient world. In the process, Sureshkumar Muthukumaran offers a fresh narrative history of human connectivity across Afro-Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the late centuries BCE.