In order to determine whether ancient Egyptians had already selected and cultivated very specialized flax types according to their purpose for textile or oil production, respectively, we compared archaeobotanical flax finds with nearly 3000 diverse genebank accessions kept at the Plant Gene Resources of Canada (PGRC).
How did ancient Egypt preserve flax seeds?
The dry climate of Egypt has played a crucial role in preserving not only the flax seeds but also the capsules. This preservation allows for the expansion of the application of a multidisciplinary methodology to analyse ancient plant material and gain insights into the evolution of flax in Ancient Egypt.
When was Flax found in Egypt?
Desiccated preserved flax remains from Egyptian sites dating from the 3rd millennium BC to the second century AD (Fig. 1 and Table 1) that were collected at the end of the nineteenth century by Georg Schweinfurth, a German pioneer of archaeobotany and textile archaeology (Finneiser et al 2010; Fig. 2) were used for this study.
Who was the first author to study ancient Egyptian flax seeds?
Curr Anthropol 52 (4):537?254 A grant given by the EU (Synthesys Programme) enabled the first author to study ancient Egyptian flax seeds and capsules from the Schweinfurth collection kept at the Botanical Museum of the Free University of Berlin in Germany.