Ancient American Agriculture
Apr. 11th, 2007 07:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brdgtRoots of maize date back
Study says the plant originated in Mexico 1,200 years earlier than formerly thought
Newsday.com, April 10, 2007
A Florida State University anthropologist has new evidence that ancient farmers in Mexico were cultivating an early form of maize, the forerunner of modern corn, about 7,300 years ago - 1,200 years earlier than scholars previously thought.
Researcher Mary Pohl conducted an analysis of sediments in the Gulf Coast state of Tabasco and concluded that people there were planting crops in the New World about 5300 BC.
The discovery of cultivated maize in Tabasco, a tropical lowland area, challenges previously held ideas that Mesoamerican farming originated in the semi-arid highlands of Mexico and shows an earlier than previously believed exchange of food plants.
The results of Pohl's study appear in yesterday's edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"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 ... tropical areas in the New World, including Panama and South America."
The shift from foraging to the cultivation of food 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.
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 5100 BC. Pohl's current study analyzed phytoliths - the silica structure of the plant - that puts the date of the introduction of maize along the coastline of 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.
Copyright 2007 Newsday Inc.
Study says the plant originated in Mexico 1,200 years earlier than formerly thought
Newsday.com, April 10, 2007
A Florida State University anthropologist has new evidence that ancient farmers in Mexico were cultivating an early form of maize, the forerunner of modern corn, about 7,300 years ago - 1,200 years earlier than scholars previously thought.
Researcher Mary Pohl conducted an analysis of sediments in the Gulf Coast state of Tabasco and concluded that people there were planting crops in the New World about 5300 BC.
The discovery of cultivated maize in Tabasco, a tropical lowland area, challenges previously held ideas that Mesoamerican farming originated in the semi-arid highlands of Mexico and shows an earlier than previously believed exchange of food plants.
The results of Pohl's study appear in yesterday's edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"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 ... tropical areas in the New World, including Panama and South America."
The shift from foraging to the cultivation of food 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.
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 5100 BC. Pohl's current study analyzed phytoliths - the silica structure of the plant - that puts the date of the introduction of maize along the coastline of 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.
Copyright 2007 Newsday Inc.
