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  • From: "TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Ancient farming in South America
  • Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2007 10:17:41 -0600



Ancient farming in South America
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-sci-food29jun29,1,2602256.s

tory?coll=la-headlines-world&ctrack=2&cset=true

New tests of samples show communities were growing crops at least 10,000
years ago, about the same time as the Old World.
By Thomas H. Maugh II, Times Staff Writer
June 29, 2007

South Americans were raising crops at least 10,000 years ago, about 5,000
years earlier than previously thought and nearly contemporary with the
emergence of agriculture in the Old World, based on new ages obtained for
agricultural samples excavated from the Andes 20 years ago.

"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 in today's
issue of the journal Science. The new find "is bringing it into line with
dates from the Old World."

The plant remains found in the 1,500-foot-high Nanchoc Valley on the lower
western slopes of the Andes were not native to the region but came from
several other sites on the continent. So even though the communities were
small and isolated, the residents were involved in some trade over fairly
long distances.

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.

"People were in contact with one another," said Piperno, who was not
involved in the research.

For archeologists, the origins of agriculture are important because only
when communities developed a stable and adequate supply of food could they
devote time and effort to other endeavors, such as statehood, writing,
monument building — and even warfare.

Researchers now know that domestication of crops occurred independently in
at least 10 locations around the world, including Africa, southern India
and New Guinea.

The Peruvian agricultural samples were excavated two decades ago by Rossen
from floors, hearths, storage units, stone hoes, bowls, garden plots and
irrigation canals in the small villages along the Nanchoc River.

The sites themselves were accurately radiocarbon dated, "but we could never
get the dates [from the agricultural samples] to match up," he said.

After new techniques for preparing the samples were developed, archeologist
Tom D. Dillehay of Vanderbilt University decided to have them re-tested.

"The samples turned out perfectly with the dates we expected to get 20
years ago," Rossen said.

They found two separate squash samples dated to 9,240 and 7,800 years ago,
a peanut sample dated to 7,700 years ago, a cotton bole dated to 5,400
years ago and two quinoa samples dated to 8,000 and 7,500 years ago. Quinoa
is a high-protein grain that can be substituted for rice.

These plants "did not typically grow wild in that area," said Dillehay, the
study's lead author. "We believe they must have therefore been domesticated
elsewhere first and then brought into this valley by traders or mobile
horticulturists."

Piperno said the squash they found was probably domesticated farther north,
perhaps in Colombia.

The peanut is thought to have been first grown east of the Andes in a
region encompassing southeastern Bolivia, northwestern Argentina, northern
Paraguay and western Brazil's Mato Grosso area.

The peanuts Rossen found in the Nanchoc Valley don't look very much like
modern peanuts. That indicates that, as in the Old World, people practiced
systematic agriculture for a long time before the genetic traits emerged
that now characterize crops as domesticated, Piperno said.






  • [Livingontheland] Ancient farming in South America, TradingPostPaul, 06/29/2007

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