Sainsbury Institute’s Handa Archaeology Fellow Junzo Uchiyama’s co-authored article ‘Common Carp Aquaculture in Neolithic China Dates Back 8,000 Years’ has been published on 24th September 2019 in Nature.
A team of international researchers analysed teeth of carp found in China and by comparing the body-length distributions the team found evidence that carp aquaculture existed 8,000 years ago, a staggering 5,000 years earlier than previously thought.
You can read the article here and take a look at some of the behind-the-scenes pictures of the research below.
Here are some common carp which had been raised over the summer in a paddy field and caught in the autumn in Matsukawa, Nagano, Japan, where fish farming is still practiced today.
A pharyngeal bone of a carp that was found in Jiahu, China. The shape of the bone differs greatly between different species of fish and it is very prominent in cyprinids, therefore easily identifiable. This is the part the team used to estimate the body length.
Photo by Tuneo Nakajima, Lake Biwa Museum.