Join historian turned genetic detective Todd Little-Siebold for a talk on the use of traditional techniques of historical research alongside genomic profiling to historic mysteries about the introduction of European fruit crops to North America. In Georgia, the iconic peach became a central crop for native communities long before Europeans settled. Apples arrived in America apparently as early as the 1530s.  Through genetic analysis to recreate the family tree of all known apples researchers have discovered that almost all early American apples have French parentage. Why is this?  It is an unexpected empirical reality that requires explanation. As researchers try to reconstruct the introduction of European food crops, especially fruit trees, it is fascinating to explore the line between that which is documented in the genome of apples (the archive of DNA) and the earliest histories of contact, exchange and eventually settlement. Who were the French grandparents, and what lines of historical research could shed light on their arrival in the New World?"

Free and open to the public.

Pizza will be served.

This is an FYO event.

Little-Siebold is a professor of hstory at the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine. Trained as a historian of 19th-century Guatemala at Tulane University in New Orleans, he has spent the last 25 years as the only full-time historian at the college. He teaches Latin American history, environmental history (both terrestrial and marine), community-based research, Native American history and the history of Agriculture.