A multinational team led by Margot Besseiche of the University of Montpellier and Charlène Bouchaud of the French National Museum of Natural History has released DateBack, an open-access repository that pulls together every published archaeobotanical record of the genus Phoenix from prehistoric times to Late Antiquity in Southwest and South Asia. The study was published in May on bioRxiv.
The first version registers 154 entries from 110 sites, each standardised for context, dating method and anatomical part, alongside 74 radiocarbon dates tied directly to palm remains.
Gulf consumption millennia before cultivation elsewhere
The compiled data show that the oldest securely dated remains—a pair of charred seeds from Dalma Island in today’s United Arab Emirates—fall between 5,290 and 4,540 cal BCE, confirming date consumption in the Gulf about seven millennia ago.
Cultivation appears later: first in southern Mesopotamia and the northern Gulf during the 4th millennium BCE, then in eastern Arabia and the Indus Valley in the 3rd millennium BCE.
In the Levant, repeated finds remain too uncertain for firm conclusions; clear evidence of orchards is only in the late 2nd millennium BCE, while southern Arabia is not attested until the 1st millennium BCE.
Uneven archaeological coverage
The records cluster in the Levant and the Gulf. Saudi Arabia, despite its size, contributes only nine entries, a disparity the authors link to limited archaeobotanical projects and historical collection biases.
Such gaps, they argue, have long obscured the chronology of date-palm domestication
A tool for re-examining palm history
Built in R and served through the French Institute of Bioinformatics, DateBack lets users filter the dataset, map sites and download tables for further work.
The team encourages researchers to add new finds or corrections via a dedicated address; version tracking records every change.
Planned updates include North African material, Islamic-period layers and micro-remains such as pollen and iconography.
By consolidating scattered literature into a single, citable resource, the authors say the platform will clarify when, where and how the iconic oasis tree shifted from wild foraging to managed orchard—and where unanswered questions remain.
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