Swiss farmers contributed to the domestication of the opium poppy

18 May 2021

Fields of opium poppies once bloomed where the Zurich Opera House underground garage now stands. Through a new analysis of archaeological seeds, researchers at the University of Basel have been able to bolster the hypothesis that prehistoric farmers throughout the Alps participated in domesticating the opium poppy.

Although known today primarily as the source of opium and opiates, the poppy is also a valuable food and medicinal plant. Its seeds can be used to make porridge and cooking oil. Unlike all other previously domesticated crops, which are assumed to have been domesticated in south-west Asia (various grains, legumes and flax), experts believe that the opium poppy (Papaver somniferum L.) was domesticated in the western Mediterranean, where its presumed progenitor Papaver somniferum subsp. setigerum (DC.) Arcang is native and still grows wild today.

Using a new method of analysis, researchers from the universities of Basel and Montpellier have now been able to strengthen the hypothesis that prehistoric farmers living in pile dwellings around the Alps began to cultivate and use the opium poppy on a large scale from about 5500 BCE. By doing so, they contributed to its domestication, as the team reports in the journal Scientific Reports.

Exact classification previously impossible
“When and where the opium poppy was domesticated has been impossible to determine exactly until now,” says the study's leader, Dr. Ferran Antolín of the University of Basel and the German Archaeological Institute in Berlin. “There were no methods of identifying archaeological findings of poppy seeds either as domesticated or as a wild subspecies.”

More:
https://www.unibas.ch/en/News-Events/News/Uni-Research/Swiss-farmers-contributed-to-the-domestication-of-the-opium-poppy.html