Ancient Agriculture in America

[Boreas]

Panama agriculture may be 7.800 years

Ancient people living in Panama were processing and eating domesticated species of plants like maize, manioc, and arrowroot at least as far back as 7,800 years ago – much earlier than previously thought – according to new research by a University of Calgary archaeologist.

One of the most hotly debated issues in the discipline of archaeology is how and why certain human societies switched from hunting and gathering to producing their own food through agriculture. Dr. Ruth Dickau, a post-doctoral researcher in the U of C's department of archaeology, has used a new technique called starch grain analysis to recover microscopic residues of plants directly off the stone tools that people were using in Panama 3,000 to 7,800 years ago.

"These results add to the growing evidence that the earliest beginnings of farming were not centred in arid highland regions like central Mexico and the Peruvian Andes as once believed, but in the lowland areas and humid forests of the American tropics," Dickau says.

"What is particularly interesting is that these crops were originally domesticated outside of Panama; maize was domesticated in Mexico, and manioc and arrowroot in South America. Panama, as a relatively narrow land-bridge between the two American continents, was an important route for the human spread of food crops, and clearly a region where agriculture was practiced very early in history."

Dickau is the lead author of a paper appearing next week in the online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, an internationally respected academic publication. The paper is titled "Starch Grain Evidence for the Preceramic Dispersals of Maize and Root Crops into Tropical Dry and Humid Forests of Panama."

Dry, arid areas favour archaeological preservation, whereas tropical regions typically don't – especially when it comes to foodstuffs. But with starch grain analysis, researchers are able to isolate residue from microcrevices in both ground stone and flaked stone tools and identify preserved starch grains under a microscope.

"The ability of starch grain analysis to identify plant taxa in the unfavourable preservation environments of western and central Panama confirms the importance of this method for establishing the presence of particular plant species, both domesticated and wild, in the subsistence practices of early inhabitants of tropical forests," the authors write.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-02/uoc-pof021507.php

###

Much of Dickau's research was conducted as part of her graduate studies at Temple University in Philiadelphia. The second and third authors are Anthony J. Ranere (Temple University), and Richard G. Cooke (Smithsonian Tropical Research Inst., Panama).

To speak to Dr. Ruth Dickau, contact her office at (403) 220-5230, or phone Greg Harris, U of C media relations, at (403) 220-3506 or cell, (403) 540-7306 or email gharris@ucalgary.ca.
   

[Boreas]

American chili peppers from 6,000 years ago

Researchers report that across the Americas, chili peppers (Capsicum
species) were cultivated and traded as early as 6,000 years ago -
predating the invention of pottery in some areas of the Americas. The
researchers analyzed starch grains to trace the history of chili
peppers in the Americas.
     

When Europeans arrived in the Americas, chili peppers were among
the most widespread of the plants domesticated in the New World.
However, the chronology and precise geography of their origins and
early dispersals had been very poorly understood. Tropical
environments, where many chili varieties were first domesticated and
then incorporated into prehistoric farming systems, degrade most
organic archaeological remains.
     

Linda Perry of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington solved
the problem of decaying vegetable matter leaving scant evidence when
she found peppers could be identified from fossilised grains of
starch. Starch grains from chilli peppers were then found alongside
remnants of corn, yucca, squash, beans and palm fruit, suggesting
ancient recipes designed to make a taste more palatable. The starch
microfossils were found at seven sites dating from 6,000 years ago to
European contact and ranging from the Bahamas to southern Peru.
     

Cultivated chili starch grains are discernible from those of
wild chilies. The remains of these domesticated chili peppers were
often found with corn, forming part of a major, ancient food complex
that predates pottery in some regions. The oldest Capsicum starch
grains were found in southwestern Ecuador at two sites dating to
6,100 years ago. The chili remains were associated with previously
identified corn, achira, arrowroot, leren, yuca, squash, beans and
palm fruit, adding to the picture of an early, complex agricultural
system in that region.
     
In Panama, chilies occurred with corn and domesticated yams that
dated 5,600 years before present. Chilies were found at a site
occupied 6,000 years ago in the Peruvian Andes, with microscopic
remains of corn, arrowroot and possibly potato. In this case, the
chilies were identified as the species C. pubescens. The rocoto
pepper, a cultivar of this species, is still a staple in the Peruvian
diet. Newer sites in the Bahamas (1,000 ybp) and in Venezuela
(500-1,000 ybp) also yielded remains of both corn and chilies.
     

The research also advances techniques in "archaeobiology," a
discipline that fuses archaeology and, in this case, botany. "We
demonstrate that prehistoric people from the Bahamas to Peru were
using chilies in a variety of foods a long time ago. The peppers
would have enhanced the flavor of early cultivars such as maize and
manioc and may have contributed to their rapid spread after they were
domesticated," said co-author Dolores Piperno, Smithsonian scientist
at the National Museum of Natural History and at the Smithsonian
Tropical Research Institute in Panama.
     

It's impossible to identify with certainty the first spice ever
sprinkled on a roasting haunch or thrown in a stew-pot. But Wendy
Applequist, an ethnobotanist at the Missouri Botanical Garden, said
capers have been found at 10,000-year-old sites in Iran and Iraq;
coriander at a 8,500-year-old site in Israel; and fenugreek in
Syria's Tell Aswad, which is 9,000 years old. Whether these were
domesticated or wild is not known.

Sources: Nature.com (15 February 2007), ScienceDaily, The Independent
(16 February 2007), Post-Gazette.com (18 February 2007);

http://tinyurl.com/2ynkpy
http://tinyurl.com/2naung
http://tinyurl.com/2u6flu
http://tinyurl.com/23k2uf


   

[Boreas]

Maize farming in Mexico dated back to 7.300 BP

A Florida State University anthropologist has discovered new evidence
that suggests that ancient farmers in Mexico cultivated an early form
of maize, the forerunner of modern corn, about 7,300 years ago,
almost 1,200 years earlier than previously thought.
     
Professor Mary Pohl conducted an analysis of sediments in the
Gulf Coast of Tabasco, Mexico, and concluded that people were
planting crops in the 'New World' of the Americas around 5,300 BCE.
"This research expands our knowledge on the transition to agriculture
in Mesoamerica," Pohl said. "These are significant new findings that
fill out knowledge of the patterns of early farming. It expands on
research that demonstrates that maize spread quickly from its hearth
of domestication in southwest Mexico to southeast Mexico and other
tropical areas in the New World including Panama and South America."
     
The shift from foraging to the cultivation of food was a
significant change in lifestyle for these ancient people and laid the
foundation for the later development of complex society and the rise
of the Olmec civilization, Pohl said. The Olmecs predated the better
known Mayans by about 1,000 years. "Our study shows that these early
maize cultivators located themselves on barrier islands between the
sea and coastal lagoons, where they could continue to fish as well as
grow crops," she said.
     
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 BCE. 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.
     
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. 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.

Sources: EurekAlert! (9 April 2007), Yahoo! News (10 April 2007)
http://tinyurl.com/2qcffe
http://tinyurl.com/346nuz

[Boreas]

Ancient farming in South America

Agriculture 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: Los Angeles Times, The Guardian
(29 June 2007)


http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-06/vu-eeo062507.php

[Boreas]

A recent report from archaeologist Tom Dillehay tells of several sites in the Ñanchoc Valley in the Peruvian Andes..

Under sealed house-floors built as perfect provencies they uncovered domesticated squash dated to be between 9240 and 7600 years old!

Further they found peanuts (7840 BP), quinoa (8000-7500 BP), and cotton (5490 BP).

http://www.vanderbilt.edu/news/releases/2007/5/16/vanderbilt-anthropologist-elected-to-american-academy-of-arts-and-sciences