Atlantis Online
March 29, 2024, 03:18:18 am
Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
News: Comet theory collides with Clovis research, may explain disappearance of ancient people
http://uscnews.sc.edu/ARCH190.html
 
  Home Help Arcade Gallery Links Staff List Calendar Login Register  

M A I Z E - ZEA MAYS

Pages: 1 [2]   Go Down
  Print  
Author Topic: M A I Z E - ZEA MAYS  (Read 1524 times)
0 Members and 31 Guests are viewing this topic.
Bianca
Superhero Member
******
Posts: 41646



« Reply #15 on: November 07, 2008, 10:24:58 am »










During her field work in Tabasco seven years ago, Pohl found traces of pollen from primitive maize and evidence of forest clearing dating to about 5,100 B.C. Pohl's current study analyzed phytoliths, the silica structure of the plant, which puts the date of the introduction of maize in southeastern Mexico 200 years earlier than her pollen data indicated. It also shows that maize was present at least a couple hundred years before the major onset of forest clearing. Traces of charcoal found in the soil in 2000 indicated the ancient farmers used fire to clear the fields on beach ridges to grow the crops.

"This significant environmental impact of maize cultivation was surprisingly early," she said. "Scientists are still considering the impact of tropical agriculture and forest clearing, now in connection with global warming."

The phytolith study also was able to confirm that the plant was, in fact, domesticated maize as opposed to a form of its ancestor, a wild grass known as teosinte. Pohl and her colleagues were unable to make the distinction after the pollen study. Primitive maize was probably domesticated from teosinte and transported to the Gulf Coast lowlands where it was cultivated, according to Pohl.

The discovery of cultivated maize in Tabasco, a tropical lowland area of Mexico, challenges previously held ideas that Mesoamerican farming originated in the semi-arid highlands of Mexico and shows an early exchange of food plants.

Pohl's PNAS article also addresses misconceptions about the paleoecological method, which recovers microfossil evidence, such as pollen, starch grains, or phytoliths, as opposed to macrofossils or whole plant parts, such as maize cobs. Pohl and her colleagues argue that contamination of samples through the geological processes of sediment mixing is more likely to occur with macrofossils than microfossils.

The National Science Foundation and the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies funded the research.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Adapted from materials provided by Florida State University.
Need to cite this story in your essay, paper, or report? Use one of the following formats:
 APA

 MLA Florida State University (2007, April 10). Anthropologist Finds Earliest Evidence Of Maize Farming In Mexico. ScienceDaily.



Retrieved September 29, 2008, from



http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2007/04/070409181647.htm
Report Spam   Logged

Your mind understands what you have been taught; your heart what is true.
Pages: 1 [2]   Go Up
  Print  
 
Jump to:  

Powered by EzPortal
Bookmark this site! | Upgrade This Forum
SMF For Free - Create your own Forum
Powered by SMF | SMF © 2016, Simple Machines
Privacy Policy