Core value, trade roots: The apple

In myth, of course, the apple goes all the way back to the start.

- Anesha George [e-mail]

In reality, it’s hard to tell when it first evolved, because the last Ice Age, which ended about 11,700 years ago, more or less wiped it out across much of the planet (along with a lot of flora and most megafauna).

Among the species that remained was a small wild apple called the Malus sieversii, which grew in Central Asia (and still grows in the cool mountains of Kazakhstan). These fruits the size of chicken eggs had red-and-yellow cheeks, and a flavour that was a mix of sweet and tart.

They were designed to entice large herbivores and omnivores to swallow them and spread the seeds.

Among the omnivores that took to the juicy, nutritious fruit were humans. There is evidence of apple orchards being tended as far back as 3,000 BCE.

By about the 2nd century BCE, the apple got an unexpected boost from an unlikely source. As the Silk Route took shape, this fruit became a quick and convenient source of nutrition. Humans ate it; horses ate it. More importantly, they travelled with it.