This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Melons produce many seeds, making the melon shape a traditional symbol of fertility and prosperity in Chinese culture. But the historical debate about how melons made their way to modern tables is as long and twisted as the vines they grow on.
A new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals newly discovered aspects of melons' ancient history. Based on an analysis of ancient DNA from seeds at a Song dynasty imperial archaeological site in southeastern China (circa 960–1279), scientists at Washington University in St. Louis have determined that ancient melons in East Asia likely arrived from South Asia, rather than being developed from wild Chinese plants, and that they lacked the sweetness of modern dessert melons.
These melons' flesh color likely resonated with Song dynasty aesthetic sensibilities, as seen in jade-green celadon ceramics that were locally crafted in melon-shaped forms. Taken together, the study offers a rare and compelling example of how cultural tastes and crop traits may have influenced each other, the researchers said. The study is also an example of how scientists can use ancient DNA to answer historical questions beyond what macrobotanical evidence or artifacts alone can reveal.
Biologist Susanne Renner, in WashU Arts & Sciences and co-author of the new study, has studied melons for more than 25 years. "At that time, it was assumed that because the genus Cucumis, to which melons belong, has numerous wild African species, that melons originated in Africa," she said. But Renner was never convinced.
In 2010, she published a study based on some 100 Cucumis samples from Africa, Australia and Asia that showed that melon has numerous previously overlooked species-level relatives in Australia and around the Indian Ocean. "Based on biogeographic analysis, we inferred that melons most likely originated in Asia, not Africa," Renner said. It is now clear that melon domestication occurred independently once in Northeast Africa and twice in India, but archaeobotanical evidence points to a possible additional domestication event in southeastern China.
Renner was intrigued when she sat down next to WashU colleague Xinyi Liu, a professor of archaeology in Arts & Sciences, at a WashU Living Earth Collaborative event. Liu told her about the many archaeological seeds, including those recently uncovered in an excavation of a medieval port in southeastern China. Located in present-day Wenzhou, the Gugang port (Shuomen Gugang) helped connect continental East Asia with the Pacific and Indian Ocean worlds during the Song dynasty.
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