Ancient farming in South AmericaAgriculture was taking root in South America almost as early as the
first farmers were breaking ground in the Middle East, research
indicates. Evidence that squash was being grown nearly 10,000 years
ago, in what is now Peru, is reported in the journal Science. A team
led by anthropologist Tom Dillehay of Vanderbilt University also
uncovered remains of peanuts from 7,600 years ago and cotton dated to
5,500 years ago in the floors and hearths of sites in the Nanchoc
valley of northern Peru.
"We believe the development of agriculture by the Nanchoc people
served as a catalyst for cultural and social changes that eventually
led to intensified agriculture, institutionalised political power and
new towns in the Andean highlands and along the coast 4,000 to 5,500
years ago," Mr Dillehay said. The earliest evidence of growing wheat,
barley and legumes dates to about 10,000 to 12,000 years ago in the
Middle East. "The plants we found in northern Peru did not typically
grow in the wild in that area," Mr Dillehay said. "We believe they
must have therefore been domesticated elsewhere first and then
brought to this valley by traders or mobile horticulturists."
Dillehay and his colleagues found wild-type peanuts, squash and
cotton as well as a quinoa-like grain, manioc and other tubers and
fruits in the floors and hearths of buried preceramic sites, garden
plots, irrigation canals, storage structures and on hoes. "The use of
these domesticated plants goes along with broader cultural changes we
believe existed at that time in this area, such as people staying in
one place, developing irrigation and other water management
techniques, creating public ceremonials, building mounds and
obtaining and saving exotic artifacts," Dillehay said. That finding
correlates well with previous studies showing a trade in obsidian, a
naturally occurring glass used to make knives, between the mountains
and the coast 10,000 years ago, said archeobotanist Dolores Piperno
of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama.
"We always thought there was a gap of several thousand years
before agriculture began in the New World," said archeologist Jack
Rossen of Ithaca College in New York, one of the authors of the
report. The new find "is bringing it into line with dates from the
Old World." Researchers now know that domestication of crops occurred
independently in at least 10 locations around the world, including
Africa, southern India and New Guinea.
Sources:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-06/vu-eeo062507.phpLos Angeles Times, The Guardian
(29 June 2007)
http://tinyurl.com/2txtmo