Barley key to ancient settlement

[questionmark]

LHASA, Tibet, Nov. 20 (UPI) -- The Tibetan Plateau -- the so-called roof of the world -- and its thousands of glaciers supply millions of people throughout Asia with clean, fresh drinking water. It provides a steady flow to almost all of Asia's major rivers. But though life-giving, the plateau itself isn't exactly a welcoming place. It's cold and often barren.

Now, thanks to a new study, scientists know how it was settled. The key was a hardy grain -- now a staple of health food stores -- called barley. It was barley's ability to stave off the cold, thin air of the Himalayas, researchers say, that first allowed the earliest settlers of the Tibetan Plateau to persist at elevations as high as 10,000 feet.

"As barley is frost hardy and cold-tolerant, it is growing very well on the Tibetan Plateau even today," Fahu Chen, an archaeologist at Lanzhou University in China, told The New York Times in an e-mail. "Barley agriculture could provide people with enough sustained food supplies even during wintertime."

Read more: http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2014/11/20/Barley-key-to-ancient-settlement-of-Tibetan-Plateau/1501416521815/#ixzz3JoH50B47