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Fruit from the Sands: The Silk Road Origins of the Foods We Eat Paperback – September 22, 2020

4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 47 ratings
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"A comprehensive and entertaining historical and botanical review, providing an enjoyable and cognitive read.”—Nature

The foods we eat have a deep and often surprising past. From almonds and apples to tea and rice, many foods that we consume today have histories that can be traced out of prehistoric Central Asia along the tracks of the Silk Road to kitchens in Europe, America, China, and elsewhere in East Asia. The exchange of goods, ideas, cultural practices, and genes along these ancient routes extends back five thousand years, and organized trade along the Silk Road dates to at least Han Dynasty China in the second century BC. Balancing a broad array of archaeological, botanical, and historical evidence, Fruit from the Sands presents the fascinating story of the origins and spread of agriculture across Inner Asia and into Europe and East Asia. Through the preserved remains of plants found in archaeological sites, Robert N. Spengler III identifies the regions where our most familiar crops were domesticated and follows their routes as people carried them around the world. With vivid examples, Fruit from the Sands explores how the foods we eat have shaped the course of human history and transformed cuisines all over the globe.
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Previous page
  1. Print length
    392 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    University of California Press
  4. Publication date
    September 22, 2020
  5. Dimensions
    6 x 1.2 x 8 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0520379268
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0520379268
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"A paleoethnobotanical odyssey exploring the cornucopia of foods that traveled along the Silk Road." ― Economic Botany

About the Author

Robert N. Spengler III is the Archaeobotany Laboratory Director at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, a Volkswagen/Mellon Foundations Fellow, and a former Visiting Research Scholar at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World.
 

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ University of California Press; First Edition (September 22, 2020)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 392 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0520379268
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0520379268
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.1 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.2 x 8 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 47 ratings

About the author

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Robert N. Spengler III

Robert N. Spengler III

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Robert N. Spengler III is the Archaeobotany Laboratories Director at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, a Volkswagen/Mellon Foundations Fellow, and a former Visiting Research Scholar at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World. He travels the routes of the ancient Silk Road in search of the origins of the food we eat.

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
47 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

E. N. Anderson
5.0 out of 5 stars Plants in Central Asian history
Reviewed in the United States on July 31, 2019
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This book is an introduction to the plants grown in and near Central Asia, slanted toward their genetics and archaeological record. Robert Spengler is a young archaeobotanist with a great deal of experience in the area. He has discovered many of the plant remains he describes. The book covers grains, legumes, fruit, nuts, vegetables, spices, oils, and tea, all with notes on their origins and spread to or from central Asia. The grain section starts with broomcorn millet, a food formerly extremely important--widely grown as the staple food--in central Asia, but now fallen and almost forgotten; one rejoices to see it rescued from obscurity. Another important contribution is stressing the enormous importance of fruits and nuts in the region. They dominate stall after stall in the marketplaces, and some cities, such as Tashkent, have become close to fruit forests from planting fruit trees as street and yard trees. The accounts are well done and engaging, with many photos by the author. There are a few errors. One I have to flag, because I am mistakenly cited for it, is equating the Chinese word "fan" with cooked rice. No, it is the general Chinese word for cooked grain used as staple food. In south China it is virtually synonymous with cooked rice, but that isn't really the meaning of the word. (Rice as a species has its own name, "dao.") Errors notwithstanding, this is an important book. Most English-language writing on central Asian food concentrates on meat and dairy products from the famous steppe herders. This book fills a major gap.
14 people found this helpful
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Alexander Blevens
5.0 out of 5 stars Who knew?
Reviewed in the United States on November 7, 2022
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Interesting book for those of us who just like to know weird stuff about our everyday world. Spengler unwinds the common thread in most of our domestic foods: They were cultivated, hybridized, carried, bartered, developed, and sold along the trans-Eurasian trade routes collectively known as the Silk Road in the first millennia BC. It is hard to shop in the produce section of Piggly Wiggly and buy something that was not profoundly influenced by the Silk Road.
One person found this helpful
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Chef
5.0 out of 5 stars A stunning piece of work. Inspiring and relevant
Reviewed in the United States on November 4, 2021
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Amazing how relevant to our situation today Dr. Spengler's book is. Any botanist, chef, archeologist or scientist should read this.
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Janice Cook
4.0 out of 5 stars Not for the casual reader.
Reviewed in the United States on November 16, 2019
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Fruit of the Sands provides a fairly deep overview of the development of agriculture via the foods that we are familiar with, from fruit to nuts so to speak. It opens with an overview of grains and how the development of the farming of them led to the development of what we call civilization. A rather dry presentation, but the reader is not likely to have come for daring do, mystery, or sex....though they are all there, in low key.
3 people found this helpful
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Lu-Shu Yeh
5.0 out of 5 stars Opening my mind
Reviewed in the United States on November 3, 2019
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I love the part he mentioned about millets. This is the first book I read mentioned about millets in English.
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Sandy Harcourt
1.0 out of 5 stars Why the passive tense?
Reviewed in the United States on August 18, 2019
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If you want to make writing boring to read, write in the passive tense. This book is written in the passive tense. "broomcorn millet is known mainly as ..." (p. 60). Come on! How about "We mostly know broomcorn millet as ..."?
Fascinating topi. I wish I could have carried on reading. But I gave up on page 60.
Please rewrite in active tense, and I'll but it again.
6 people found this helpful
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Kathleen Buczko
3.0 out of 5 stars Start reading at chapter 4 and this is 4 stars
Reviewed in the United States on August 14, 2019
In the middle of reading now. Introduction through Chapter 3 is very dense reading. Learning things, but 60% of what is presented is minutiae that I won’t even try to remember. Sorta sifting words looking for nuggets - perhaps in trying to present a vibrant description the point is lost. I estimate that if half of what was written was just tossed, the remainder would be more enjoyable at the price, assuming a bit of editing was done. Chapter 4 seems to provide what’s I was looking for.
7 people found this helpful
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Robert
2.0 out of 5 stars Unreadable
Reviewed in the United States on July 30, 2019
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I really wanted to like this book. It's a fascinating topic and the author has done an incredible amount of research, so that the book is full of interesting information. Unfortunately it is incoherently presented, with facts about different crops and different eras all seemingly tossed in the air and presented in the order they fell, with nothing to keep a non-academic reader engaged.
10 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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draeb
5.0 out of 5 stars Necessário
Reviewed in Spain on January 10, 2022
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Gostei bastante recomendo
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Amazon Customer
3.0 out of 5 stars Not for a casual reader
Reviewed in Canada on September 23, 2019
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It was rather dry. For example there were many sentences listing ten or more items (vegetables, fruits, locations , etc). It was organized like an encyclopedia
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amanofjest
5.0 out of 5 stars A good overview on a fascinating topic
Reviewed in Germany on October 21, 2019
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Well written, a bit technical in some parts but quite digestible. If you're interested on the start of globalization and the Silk Road, a must read book.
One person found this helpful
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P. Salus
2.0 out of 5 stars An extremely disappointing book
Reviewed in Canada on August 24, 2019
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I have been interested in "cultural transfer" since the 1950s. While the author is a noted paleoethnobotanist, he is neither a good writer, nor an adequate scholar. The latter is easily documented. One of Christopher Beckwith's books is cited, but not his "Empires of the Silk Road." Francesca Bray's volume in "Science and Civilisation in China" (vol. VI, pt. 2) is cited, but not her "The Rice Economies" (nor is Joseph Needham's vol. III of SSC). That takes care of the letter "B." Wood's "The Silk Road" meets with approval, but her "Did Marco Polo go to China?" (1995) is dismissed in under a sentence. I could go on for a while, but I want to consider two other topics. In discussing buckwheat, the author expresses surprise at the speed of its adoption in Europe (it seems to have arrived early in the 15th century). Why? It preceded the tomato, the potato, bell peppers, most types of beans, etc., from the Western Hemisphere by nearly a century. Finally, to the shame of U. of California press, the production of the book is dismal. The photos are muddy, the (few) maps are inadequate and poorly labeled. A major disappointment.
One person found this helpful
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