The Little Big History of Bamboo

My chosen subject for the Little Big History project is the bamboo found in the garden of the UvA next to the Oudemanhuispoort building. As I was walking around to find a subject, the bamboo caught my attention. My first thought was that it is a very obvious non-native plant to the Netherlands, therefore it could have some interesting cultural history, especially looking at it from a socio-economic perspective. But if it is non-native, where did it come from? And in general, what did it evolve from and what are its properties?

After some research, I discovered some very interesting facts, that will tie the bamboo in the UvA garden with Big History.

First off, the type of bamboo I will talk about falls under the Bambusoideae lineage, of the woody bamboo kind. This distinction is important due to the different evolutionary tracks of the different types of bamboo. There are over 1400 species¹ of bamboo and there are exceptionally hard to identify, so I will talk about woody bamboos in general, rather than a specific species.

Evolution at Work!

Bamboo has evolved from a prehistoric grass around 20 to 30 million years ago², during the middle of the Oligocene epoch. Generally found in temperate to warm and humid climates, it is native to most of the world except for Europe and Antarctica, with most species being found on the Asian continent. It thrives in nitrogen heavy soils, though is not picky and will grow in most types of soil, making it quite hardy. Bamboo, like any plant, photosynthesizes, which is a process used by plants to convert energy into cellulose, to grow bigger.

Photosynthesis

Thanks to its ability to photosynthesize, bamboo is very good at sequestering carbon dioxide from the air. This makes it an incredibly air filter! This likely had an effect on the atmosphere of the earth and on the air quality of bamboo heavy areas in the world when it first evolved. But the ability to do this was lengthy process indeed. It first started with anoxygenic photosynthesis, in organisms that would nowadays not be categorized as plants.

Anoxygenic photosynthesis has been dated to around at least 3.5 billion years ago, but this would not become the system that plants use to 'breath' today for a very long time.

Photosynthesis in modern plants is possible by the usage of chloroplasts, a specific type of cell that specializes in this process. Chloroplasts are thought to have evolved from cyanobacteria around 2.4 billion years ago, by process of endocytosis, through which the photosynthetic bacteria were taken into eukaryotic cells and then adapted.

Consequences for the Planet..

This was the catalyst for the Great Oxidation Event³, an event which caused many life-forms to go extinct due to them not being adapted to oxygen. Additionally, the compound which was released in the atmosphere was O2, or pure oxygen. This is very reactive with a lot of different materials and was detrimental to early life. Due to most life-forms being anoxygenic, the surplus O2 also did not get removed from the atmosphere, causing temperatures to drop significantly, ushering an Ice Age unto the earth⁴.

..And the Animals.

Grasses are thought to have co-evolved⁵ with certain type of herbivores, such as early mammals and dinosaurs. There are a few reasons for this theory. The first reason is that grasses nowadays contain about 1-2% phytoliths (a compound containing silica) in their leaves; this compound was not present when grasses and bamboos first started to evolve. Alongside this, modern herbivores are known for their flat teeth made for grinding leaf-matter to a digestible mush. These characteristic teeth aren't found in fossils until about 33.5 million years ago.

For this reason, grasses and herbivores are now thought to have co-evolved⁶; the phytoliths in leaves perhaps as a way to attract herbivores that could spread the grass seeds through excrements, and herbivores developing grinding teeth to be able to process these tough fibres. The ancestor of the bamboo comes from this epoch.

The Human Touch

Bamboo is, as mentioned earlier, natively most found on the Asian continent.

Thanks to its tough fibres, bamboo is thought to have been used for tool making in North and Eastern Asia in the early eras of humanity. This would make sense, as bamboo was already plentiful in these regions at that time.

Bamboo is a relatively easy to cut and break, but quite difficult to get into a precise shape. This is due to its hollow middle and hard woody stem, which in turns makes it ideal to build things with. So there is evidence of huts made with bamboo, or even scaffolding to build bigger structures. But delicate tools were hard to make due to a theory known as the Movius Line⁷.

This is a theory that shows that tool advancements didn't spread over the Old World evenly and that the divide was an almost straight line that circled the earth. On one side, tools, mainly hand axes, were made of cryptocrystalline materials, which are rocks such as quartz, flint or obsidian and were made to be bifacial. This means that on both sides, the rock has small parts of it knocked off slowly to make it sharp. These tools are also known as Mode II tools.

Tools that resemble this shape and material aren't found in Asia in this epoch. Instead, Mode I tools have been found; these are considered much less sharp and are not made of cryptocrystalline materials. The theory is that these materials were either not available in these regions or at least weren't accessible.

It is also thought that the Mode II tools were invented after the mass displacement of certain groups out of Africa, which meant that those groups simply did not have access to the knowledge to make them.

Due to the still impressive feats H. Sapiens managed in these regions, it is speculated that they instead started making bamboo tools, since this material was ubiquitous. With the onset of agriculture⁸ this became even more true.

Cultural Significance

In Building..

Perhaps it is due to this abundance of bamboo that, in Chinese culture, it is connected to wealth and good luck; it is likely what made the Asian population in the Old World able to thrive despite their difference in tool usage.

Bamboo was used for tools and as building material since approx. the onset of the Holocene. By the time agriculture found its footing within human evolution⁹ and advancement, bamboo was already widely used through most of North-Eastern Asia, mainly in China and the islands around it.

Bamboo is incredibly sturdy, relatively light and pliable, making it ideal to make things such as arrows, baskets and boats, as well as likely being used for tools instead of stone¹⁰. These boats were likely used by early humans to spread over the islands on the coast of Eastern Asia¹¹. This likely also further helped in spreading bamboo.

In Farming..

Since it was used so widely, it is highly likely that it was cultivated in a way. Another strong indication of it being potentially cultivated is that bamboo shoots were eaten, as they still are, by early humans in at least China.

In Arts..

In Chinese culture, bamboo is also seen as a token for good luck and abundance, hence it being featured heavily in many type of art. Another use of bamboo in the arts came in the form of various instruments; most notably, the flute.

And in Trade..

We also know that it later became an important part of trade between cities, states and provinces.

Bamboo has always been deeply part of Asian culture and trade, first internally, then internationally as trade expanded outwards into the rest of the world. The biggest contributor to this was China. One of the big traders of the 16th century, along with Spain and the Netherlands, China was renowned for having larger than life ship¹² which carried a large amount of trade supplies.

Among these trade supplies was bamboo, in many different shapes and size; as paper or writing tools, carved into instruments, as building materials, and many more items. The specifications for this are difficult to trace back exactly, as many documents regarding this are untranslated in Chinese and, on top of that, heavily mystified¹³. What is known, is that there was a sort of triangular trade between China, Japan, Indonesia, Cambodia, Vietnam and the Phillipines around the mid-17th century¹⁴.

During the Cold War, the communist blockage between China and western Europe was also referenced as the Bamboo Curtain; a reference to the importance of bamboo as a cultural symbol, as well as a trade object.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the bamboo plant in the UvA garden has made a 25 billion year journey from eastern Asian to where it is now, being maintained by the university's groundkeeper. A small glimpse into the intricacies that come with the natural world and how things are brought over from place to place and can be impactful; from being made into shelter 12,000 years ago by early humans, to brightening up a persons day by growing in a garden.