Ptolemaic date-palm genomics

PALEOBOTANY: Archaeology meets DNA: peering into the past of the date palm. Scientists have decoded the genetic history of the date palm using a mysterious 2,000-year-old Egyptian artefac (DR CHELSEA SNELL , DR OSCAR ALEJANDRO PÉREZ ESCOBAR , DR NATALIA PRZELOMSKA , DR SIDONIE BELLOT AND DR PHILIPPA RYAN, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew).

Within the [Kew’s Economic Botany] collection we found an ancient Egyptian artefact made of plaited date palm leaves.

The unusual archaeological object was found 50 years ago at the ‘west dump’ in the temple complex of the animal necropolis of Saqqara, 20km south of Cairo and adjacent to the Nile Valley.

The object is from the late Ptolemaic period. The researchers were able to extract DNA from it and gain some insight into the relationship of the ancient palm to modern varieties and what that tells us about the history of its cultivation.

The article does not mention the similar work on Methuselah and Resurrection Genomics in Israel. That involves the cultivation of comparably ancient date palm seeds from Masada and other Judean Desert sites and their successful genomic sequencing.

There is no indication that anyone wants to try to clone the Egyptian palm. But who knows what is coming?

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