The origins of wine(5)

By 56,000 years ago, Syl-E had split into Syl-E1 and Syl-E2, with Syl-W following suit around 500BC.

The analysis also showed that around 11,000 years ago, a strain of Syl-E1 was cultivated somewhere near modern-day Israel that would become the ancestor of almost all today`s varieties.

As well as spreading southward to north Africa and thence as far west as Morocco, it was also carried north to Anatolia, where, within the space of 500 years, it gave rise to a new family.

The next big evolutionary milestone would come 8,000 years later, when new strains appeared in the Balkans and then, in quick succession, Iberia and modern-day France.

At almost exactly the same time that this story was beginning in the Middle East, a similar process was under way with Syl-E2 in modern-day Georgia.

Because of the mountainous terrain, migration of this grape was more limited, so the varieties developed here remained more isolated.