Rosa Rubicondior: Creationism Refuted - The History Of Viticulture

Wednesday, 23 September 2026

Creationism Refuted - The History Of Viticulture - Uninterrupted By A Global Genocide

Grape seeds from Huelva, Vitis vinifera L.

Image: Guillem Pérez Jordà.

Ancient DNA reveals that the first grapevines cultivated in the Iberian Peninsula arrived from the eastern Mediterranean 3,000 years ago

If fruit-bearing plants were created for human use by an omnipotent, omniscient god, why have humans spent thousands of years modifying them to suit our needs? Genesis 1:29 presents seed-bearing plants and fruit trees as divine provisions for humanity, yet agriculture tells a rather different story: people taking what nature supplied and, through cultivation and selection, producing crops better suited to their purposes. Grapevines provide another example of this gap between the claim of providential design and the biological history of our food.

Research published in Current Biology, traces part of that history through ancient DNA. An international team analysed 28 archaeological grape seeds from Iberia and Sardinia. Their findings indicate that cultivated vines of eastern Mediterranean ancestry reached Iberia approximately 3,000 years ago, associated with Phoenician settlement and trade. These were already domesticated plants, arriving in a landscape where wild grapevines also grew.

The imported vines subsequently crossed with local wild populations. This mixing contributed to the ancestry of traditional Iberian varieties, with characteristic lineages already identifiable in seeds from the fourth century BCE. Ancient DNA also revealed connections between medieval seeds and varieties preserved today. The record therefore contains both change and continuity: new combinations of ancestry alongside lineages maintained across centuries.

More worryingly for Bible-literalist creationist, the genetic evidence shows that viticulture (the cultivation and growing of grapes) has a continuous history from before 'Creation Week' through the mythical global flood and biological reset of Earth, right up to the present, with no evidence of interruption of either the culturally-inherited methods or of the grape varieties used.

This is a useful illustration of how evolution works. Populations do not have to acquire all their useful variation through new mutations arising on the spot. Reproduction can reshuffle existing variation, while interbreeding brings together genetic variants from previously separated populations. Cultivation then provides opportunities for people to retain and propagate plants with desirable characteristics. Human preferences influence which vines reproduce or are multiplied, but the inheritance and variation on which that selection acts are ordinary biological processes.

There is no need to imagine that ancient growers understood genetics, or that every cross was deliberate. People could recognise a useful vine without knowing why it differed from its neighbours. Nor does the survival of an old lineage imply that evolution stopped: preserving favoured plants and generating new combinations can occur within the same agricultural tradition.

The theological difficulty is not that wild grapes were useless, nor that this study somehow disproves every conceivable creator. It is that the familiar claim of plants being perfectly designed for our benefit explains so little of their actual history. Nature supplied plants shaped by their own reproductive success; humans selected among them for human purposes. In Iberian vineyards, ancient DNA now reveals a history of migration, interbreeding and inherited change where creationism offers only an assertion of intention.

From Wild Grapes to Vineyards^ A Brief History of Wine. Wine-making brings together two biological processes: the growth and reproduction of grapevines, and fermentation by yeasts, which convert sugars in grape juice into alcohol and carbon dioxide. People exploited both long before they understood genetics or microbiology.

The beginnings: gathering, cultivation and domestication

Wild grapes could be collected and fermented before fully domesticated varieties existed. Consequently, evidence of ancient wine does not, by itself, prove that its makers cultivated domesticated vines.

A large genomic study published in 2023 inferred domestication processes beginning approximately 11,000 years ago in western Asia and the Caucasus. These are estimates derived from genetic models, however, rather than directly dated vineyards or wine residues. The precise timing and geography of grape domestication remain subjects of research.

About 6000–5800 BCE: wine in Neolithic Georgia

Pottery from sites in present-day Georgia contains chemical residues interpreted as evidence of grape wine approximately 8,000 years ago. The research combined chemical analysis with archaeological and environmental evidence. These finds document an early wine-making tradition; they do not identify the first person or community ever to make wine.

About 4100 BCE: a wine-making installation in Armenia

At Areni-1 cave in Armenia, archaeologists discovered a grape-pressing basin, a collection or fermentation vat, pottery vessels and grape remains. This combination provides evidence for an organised production process, beyond the presence of wine residues alone. The installation dates to approximately 6,100 years ago.

Wine becomes an agricultural commodity

By approximately 2700 BCE, Egypt had an established royal wine-making industry in the Nile Delta. Tomb scenes and records document production and wine’s place in elite and religious life. Cultivation, processing, storage and distribution were becoming organised economic activities.

About 1000 BCE onwards: eastern vines reach Iberia

The new ancient-DNA research places cultivated grapevines of eastern Mediterranean ancestry in Iberia approximately 3,000 years ago, associated with Phoenician connections. Imported vines crossed with local wild populations, contributing to distinctive Iberian lineages. Wine production subsequently expanded, acquiring a commercial character from the late eighth century BCE.

This was a branching and interconnecting history. People moved plants; vines interbred; growers preserved useful offspring. Propagation through cuttings allowed favoured combinations of characteristics to persist without being reshuffled through seed production.

The nineteenth century: vineyards rescued by grafting

When the North American insect phylloxera reached Europe, it devastated susceptible vineyards by attacking vine roots. A successful response was to graft European grape varieties onto resistant American rootstocks. This preserved the fruit-producing variety while supplying a more resistant root system. Grafting joins plants physically; it is not the same process as hybridisation through sexual reproduction.

What this history shows

Modern wine embodies accumulated human knowledge and biological inheritance over a time-scale that the Bible narrative can't accommodate. Selection and crossing helped generate varieties, while vegetative propagation preserved favoured ones. Ancient DNA now allows researchers to investigate that history directly, alongside the presses, pottery and chemical residues left by earlier wine-makers.

The paper in Current Biology was accompanied by a University of Valencia news release:

Ancient DNA reveals that the first grapevines cultivated in the Iberian Peninsula arrived from the eastern Mediterranean 3,000 years ago
An international team jointly led by the University of Valencia (UV), the Institute of Grapevine and Wine Sciences (ICVV-CSIC), and the Institute of History (IH-CSIC) is reconstructing the origins of Iberian viticulture using DNA from archaeological seeds. The study, published in the journal Current Biology, concludes that the first cultivated grapevines on the peninsula arrived from the Eastern Mediterranean approximately 3,000 years ago, and that their lineage persists in modern-day vineyards.
The project, coordinated by Carolina Royo (ICVV) in collaboration with Guillem Pérez-Jordà (UV) and Leonor Peña Chocarro (IH), involved analyzing 28 grapevine seeds (Vitis vinifera L.) from archaeological sites in the Iberian Peninsula and Sardinia. The findings reveal that these initial cultivated varieties introduced to Iberia were genetically related to domesticated vines brought by Eastern settlers who established themselves in the southern and eastern parts of the peninsula.

The analysis of ancient DNA –that is, biological remains from the past, in this case seeds– has made it possible to establish how these strains of eastern origin began to be cultivated and how they quickly interbred with local wild varieties, giving rise to new varieties.

The results show that these first grapevines crossed at an early stage with local wild populations, contributing to the formation of the genetic lineages that would give rise to many of the traditional varieties of the Iberian Peninsula, already identifiable in seeds dating from the fourth century BC.

Pérez Jordà, lead author
Departament de Prehistòria
Arqueologia i Història Antiga
Universitat de València
Valencia, Spain.

One of the study's most surprising conclusions is the persistence of certain strains over the centuries. Genetic analysis has made it possible to identify family relationships between seeds from different periods and even links with varieties still preserved today. The researchers found evidence linking medieval seeds to modern varieties such Valencian raisin and demonstrated that the founder variety heben has remained in cultivation for at least the past 1,100 years.

The findings confirm that the spread of viticulture towards the western Mediterranean was driven primarily by the Phoenician settlers who established themselves in various parts of the western Mediterranean, bringing with them grape varieties originating in the east.

This practice was quickly adopted by local populations. As a result, vineyards and wine production expanded significantly across southern and eastern Iberia, eventually taking on a commercial character from the late eighth century BC onwards.

Over recent years, the three institutions (UV, ICVV and IH) have worked to develop new scientific capabilities in archaeogenomics and ancient DNA analysis. This area of research makes it possible to incorporate palaeogenetic information as an essential element in reconstructing the history of a product that from this point onwards became a fundamental part of our agricultural and cultural heritage.

These tools open up new opportunities for linking research into viticulture, historical heritage, biodiversity and the conservation of traditional varieties. The study also involved researchers from the University of Manchester, the University of London, the University of Montpellier, the University of Lleida and the University of Tübingen.

Publication:
Pérez-Jordà G, Peña-Chocarro L, Drosou K, et al.
Eastern origin and three-millennia persistence of a founding grapevine lineage in Iberian viticulture
Current Biology, 2026; 0

Highlights

Eastern domesticated grapevines founded Iberian viticulture around 1,000 BCE
Iberian and Central European wine grape lineages had diversified by the Iron Age
Heben grape cultivar has been clonally propagated for at least 1,100 years
Only three sexual generations separate founders from some extant Iberian cultivars

Summary
Viticulture became central to most Mediterranean civilizations a few millennia after the grapevine (Vitis vinifera L.) was domesticated in the South Caucasus/Near East. To elucidate the origins of the grapevines that enabled this westward spread over the past 3,000 years, we analyzed 28 grapevine seeds from seven archaeological sites in the Iberian Peninsula and Sardinia. Ancient DNA recovered from the oldest seeds with domesticated-like morphology (from ∼1,000 BCE), found in southwestern Spain, revealed nuclear and chloroplast genome signatures of Eastern Mediterranean cultivars. Seeds from the same and later Iron Age Iberian sites, however, showed genomic signatures suggesting hybridization between local wild grapevines and eastern-origin cultivars. The genetic makeup of Sardinian and northeastern Spanish seeds supports that local diversification giving rise to the Central European and Iberian wine genetic lineages had already occurred in the early Iron Age. In Iberia, Roman-period seeds were first-degree related to both the earliest eastern-introduced domesticates and a Medieval seed whose genetic makeup matches the extant Iberian variety “Pasa Valenciana.” Another Medieval seed was inferred as an offspring of the extant “Heben,” indicating that this major founder of Iberian germplasm has been continuously propagated for over 1,100 years. Our results confirm previous evolutionary models indicating that Western Mediterranean viticulture began with introductions of eastern domesticated grapevines, followed by early hybridization with local Iberian wild grapevines that may have facilitated viticulture adaptation to the new environment. The aDNA unveils that these introductions gave rise to extant cultivars through only a few sexual generations and long-term reliance on clonal propagation.

Graphical abstract

Figure 1 Archaeological sites and descriptions of ancient grape seeds in this study
(A) Geographical distribution of the archaeological sites (names in boxes), collected grapevine seeds (labels in circles), and their dating (bottom panel). Seeds are colored in the map according to the dated age as defined in the time scale below, where the archaeological sites are abbreviated as follows: Hu, Huelva; SU, S’Urachi; TB, Tossal de les Basses; Vi, Els Vilars; PM, Presa de Mues; Ie, Iesso; Va, Valencia. Seed labels also follow the abbreviations corresponding to the sites of origin.
(B) Distribution of wild- or domesticated-like seed morphotypes across three ancient periods: Iron Age, Roman period, and Middle Ages.
(C) Distribution of seed chlorotypes assigned from the analysis of aDNA sequences and predicted chlorotype trajectories in the dataset across three ancient periods. See also Figure S1, Data S1 and S2, and STAR Methods.

Pérez-Jordà G, Peña-Chocarro L, Drosou K, et al.
Eastern origin and three-millennia persistence of a founding grapevine lineage in Iberian viticulture
Current Biology, 2026; 0

Copyright: © 2026 The authors.
Published by Elsevier Inc. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

The history recorded in these ancient grape seeds is one of movement, interbreeding and human selection. Cultivated vines arrived from the eastern Mediterranean, crossed with local wild populations and contributed to the ancestry of Iberian varieties. Some lineages persisted for centuries, while new combinations arose around them. This is precisely the mixture of continuity and change that evolutionary biology explains.

For creationists who insist that fruit-bearing plants were thoughtfully provided for our benefit, this raises an awkward question: why did humans need to spend millennia selecting and propagating plants better suited to their requirements? Wild grapes were certainly edible, but edibility is not evidence of design for humanity. Their fruits evolved in the context of plant reproduction and seed dispersal. Human cultivation subsequently favoured characteristics useful to growers, consumers and wine-makers.

Nor would the familiar objection that “they are still grapevines” rescue the argument. Evolution does not require descendants to cease belonging to their ancestral group. Changes in inherited characteristics, including those produced by crossing populations and selecting their offspring, are evolutionary changes. Remaining grapevines is entirely consistent with acquiring new combinations of ancestry and becoming distinct cultivated varieties.

There was human intention in preserving a desirable vine, but no foresight was required in the biological processes that generated its variation. Growers could exploit useful differences without understanding their genetic basis. What ancient DNA now reveals is the material history behind that process: plants transported, populations mixed and useful lineages maintained. The explanatory work is being done by inheritance, variation and selection; invoking supernatural creation adds nothing to our understanding.

The bible's authors would have understood none of this of course; not only did they think they lived in a small flat planet with a dome over it and a history of just a few thousand years, but that the appearance of offspring of animals could be influenced by what their mother was looking at when she mated (Genesis 30:37).

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