Editing Calabash (section)

== History ==
[[File:సొరకాయ పోపు కూర (2).jpg|right|thumb|Bottle gourd curry]]
The bottle gourd has been recovered from archaeological contexts in China and Japan dating to c. 8,000–9,000 [[Before Present|BP]],<ref name="Erickson Smith Clarke et al 2005">{{cite journal |last1=Erickson |first1=David L. |last2=Smith |first2=Bruce D. |last3=Clarke |first3=Andrew C. |last4=Sandweiss |first4=Daniel H. |last5=Tuross |first5=Noreen |title=An Asian origin for a 10,000-year-old domesticated plant in the Americas |journal=Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences |date=20 December 2005 |volume=102 |issue=51 |pages=18315–18320 |doi=10.1073/pnas.0509279102 |pmid=16352716 |pmc=1311910 |bibcode=2005PNAS..10218315E |doi-access=free }}</ref> whereas in Africa, despite decades of high-quality archaeobotanical research, the earliest record of its occurrence remains the 1884 report of a bottle gourd being recovered from a 12th Dynasty tomb at Thebes dating to ca. 4,000 BP.<ref name="Erickson Smith Clarke et al 2005"/> When considered together, the genetic and archaeological information points toward ''L. siceraria'' being independently brought under domestication first in Asia, and more than 4,000 years later, in Africa.<ref name="Erickson Smith Clarke et al 2005"/>
The bottle gourd is a commonly [[Horticulture|cultivated]] plant in tropical and subtropical areas of the world, and was eventually domesticated in southern Africa. Stands of ''L. siceraria'', which may be source plants and not merely domesticated stands, were reported in Zimbabwe in 2004.<ref name="Decker-Walters2004"/> This apparent wild plant produces thinner-walled fruit that, when dried, would not endure the rigors of use on long journeys as a water container. Today's gourd may owe its tough, waterproof wall to [[Selection (biology)|selection]] pressures over its long history of [[domestication]].<ref name="Decker-Walters2005"/>

Gourds were cultivated in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas for thousands of years before [[Voyages of Christopher Columbus|Columbus' arrival to the Americas]]. Polynesian specimens of calabash were found to have genetic markers suggesting hybridization from Asian and American cultivars.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Clarke |first1=Andrew C. |last2=Burtenshaw |first2=Michael K. |last3=McLenachan |first3=Patricia A. |last4=Erickson |first4=David L. |last5=Penny |first5=David |title=Reconstructing the Origins and Dispersal of the Polynesian Bottle Gourd (Lagenaria siceraria) |journal=Molecular Biology and Evolution |date=May 2006 |volume=23 |issue=5 |pages=893–900 |doi=10.1093/molbev/msj092 |pmid=16401685 |url=https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/23/5/893/1058370 |access-date=28 November 2022|doi-access=free }}</ref> In Europe,<ref name="Jahr2002"/> [[Walahfrid Strabo]] (808–849), abbot and poet from [[Reichenau Island|Reichenau]]  and advisor to the [[Carolingian]] kings, discussed the gourd in his ''Hortulus'' as one of the 23 plants of an ideal garden.<ref name="hortulus"/><ref name="Strabo2002"/>

The mystery of the bottle gourd – namely that this African or Eurasian species was being grown in the Americas over 8,000 years ago<ref name="MATRIX2005"/> – comes from the difficulty in understanding how it arrived in the Americas. The bottle gourd was theorized to have drifted across the Atlantic Ocean from Africa to South America, but in 2005 a group of researchers suggested that it may have been domesticated earlier than food crops and livestock and, like dogs, was brought into the [[New World]] at the end of the [[ice age]] by the native hunter-gatherer [[Paleo-Indians]], which they based on a study of the genetics of archaeological samples. This study purportedly showed that gourds in American archaeological finds were more closely related to Asian variants than to African ones.<ref name=pmid16352716/>

In 2014 this theory was repudiated based on a more thorough genetic study. Researchers more completely examined the [[plastid]] genomes of a broad sample of bottle gourds, and concluded that North and South American specimens were most closely related to wild African variants and could have drifted over the ocean several or many times, as long as 10,000 years ago.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Kistler |first1=Logan |last2=Montenegro |first2=Álvaro |last3=Smith |first3=Bruce D. |last4=Gifford |first4=John A. |last5=Green |first5=Richard E. |last6=Newsom |first6=Lee A. |last7=Shapiro |first7=Beth |title=Transoceanic drift and the domestication of African bottle gourds in the Americas |journal=Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences |date=25 February 2014 |volume=111 |issue=8 |pages=2937–2941 |doi=10.1073/pnas.1318678111 |pmid=24516122 |pmc=3939861 |bibcode=2014PNAS..111.2937K |doi-access=free }}</ref>