Anthropogenic pollen indicators: Global food plants and Latin American human indicators in the pollen record

Abstract

Pollen-based evidence of human presence is crucial for reconstructing human history. However, information on the morphology of pollen grains of global food plants and regional pollen-based human indicators is scattered in the literature, leading to the risk of overlooking important evidence of human presence. To address this issue, we first compiled a comprehensive overview of 354 major food plants worldwide, creating a paleoecology-friendly format that includes their family, vernacular name, earliest known use, environmental preference, and geographical region. Moreover, we identified the sources of illustrations of their pollen grains for 209 out of 273 different genera of globally relevant food plants in 10 selected pollen atlases. Secondly, we compiled all human indicators from pollen-based paleoecological literature in Latin America (based on 750 references), providing an overview of 212 single-pollen type indicators and identified 95 crucial combinations of pollen types as “human indices”, and their corresponding references. Our review datasets aids in distilling human evidence from numerous fossil pollen records worldwide.