Food Production developed independently¸ also in the Americans. For thousands of years after first settlement¸ the Native Americans subsisted off hunting and gathering¸ developing an increasing expertise with wild plant food of all kinds. In some regions¸ they exploited such resources intensively¸ especially in the Midwest and Southeast¸ where some groups were able to occupy more or less permanent settlements for many generations. In time¸ however¸ they also started planting wild grasses as a means of supplementing wild plant resources. In time¸ too¸ this led to agriculture¸ especially in areas where wild grasses were plentiful.
By the time of Columbus¸ the ancient Americans had developed a truly remarkable expertise with all kinds of native plants¸ using them not only for food but for medicinal and many other purpose. The most important staple crop was maize¸ the only significant wild grass in the New World to be fully domesticated. It remains the most important food crop in Americas¸ used in more than 150 varieties as both food and cattle fodder. Root crops formed another substantial food source¸ especially in South America¸ and included manioc¸ sweet potatoes¸ many varieties of the potato. Chili peppers were grown as hot seasoning. Amaranth¸ sunflowers¸ cacao¸ peanuts¸ and several types of beans were also significant crops. In contrast to Old World farmers¸ the Indians had few domesticated animals. Among them were the llama of the Andes and alpacas¸ which provided wool. The dog¸ the guinea pig¸ the raucous turkey¸ and the muscovy duck were also tamed.
Most archaeologists now agree there at least three major centers of native plant domestication in the Americans ¦ highland and lowland Central America for maize¸ beans¸ squash¸ and sweet potatoes; the highlands of the central Andes for root crops like potatoes and manioc; and the southeastern United States for pepo squash¸ sunflowers¸ and other local plants. The were also four areas of later cultivation activity ¦ (northern) South America¸ the Andean area¸ Mesoamerica ¸ and southwestern and eastern North America.
Mesoamerica¦ Guilá; Naquitz and Early Cultivation
The process of plant domestication is still little understood. Archaeologist Kent Flannery bases his arguments on ecological considerations. He believes plant cultivation began as a result of strategies designed to cope with continuous short–term climatic fluctuations and constant population shifts. Flannery bases his arguments on his own excavations at the Guilá Naquitz rock shelter in the Valley of Oaxaca. Guilá Naquitz was occupied about six times over a 2000– year period between 8750 and 6670 B.C.E. The tiny forager groups who visited the cave face unpredictable climate fluctuations due to periodic droughts in an area that could support very few people per square mile.
Guilá Naquitz people foraged 11 different edible plant species over the year. In wet years¸ they experimented with deliberate planting of beans. Bean cultivation near the cave allowed people to collect more food and travel less. At first the experiments were confined to wet years¸ but as time went on and they gained more confidence¸ plant yields rose and they relied more heavily on their own cultivation as opposed to foraging. In time¸ the Guilá Naquitz people simply added squashes¸ beans¸ and a simple form of maize to a much earlier foraging adaptation. Recent AMS radiocarbon dating of samples date squash cultivation at the cave to about 8000 B.C.E.¸ as early as cereal agriculture in southwestern Asia. Flannery believes that this kind of changeover occurred in many areas of Mesoamerica.
Maize
The wild ancestor of maize was a perennial grass named teosinte¸ which still grows in Central America today. The process of domestication may have started as an unintentional byproduct of gathering teosinte. What may have happened was that the foragers favored the most harvestable of teosinte grasses, those whose seeds scattered less easily when ripe. In time, this favored type of teosinte would become established near campsites and in abandoned rubbish dumps. In time, people would remove weeds from these teosinte stands, then start deliberately planting the more useful types. Eventually¸ the grass became dependent on human intervention. A genetic revolution followed¸ which led to maize.
The hypothetical scenario for maize domestication goes as follows. The process may have started as an unintentional byproduct of gathering wild teosinte, for gathering would lead to selective pressure for harvestable types of the grass, then to deliberate planting. At first the planted teosinte was no more productive than wild forms, but it was easier to harvest, a critical stage in the process of domestication. When people began selective harvesting and planting of transitional forms of teosinte, the grass became dependent on human intervention. A genetic revolution followed, in which attributes that made harvesting easier and favored teosinte's use as a human food had a selective advantage.
The best archaeological evidence for early maize cultivation comes from the dry caves and open sites of the dry¸ highland Tehuacán Valley in southern Mexico. Archaeologist Richard MacNeish found that the earliest Techuacán people lived mainly by hunting deer and other mammals and also by collecting wild vegetable foods. MacNeish estimates that 10¸000 B.C.E. 50 to 60 percent of the people´s food came from game. After 8000 B.C.E.¸ the game population declined¸ and the people turned more and more to wild plant foods. By at least 4500 B.C.E.¸ about 90 percent of the Tehuacano diet consisted of tropical grasses, and such plants as cacti and maguey. So much grain was necessary that some forms cultivation or domestication of native plants may have been essential by this time. AMS radiocarbon dates on early maize cobs from San Marcos Cave date this staple least 3600 B.C.E.
More than 24,000 maize specimens have come from the cave of the Techuacan Valley. They document a long sequence of maize evolution, beginning with 71 small cobs from the lowest level of San Marcos cave and from deep in the Coxcaltlan Cave. The cobs are less than 2 inches (20 millimeters) long, and lack the ability to disperse their kernels naturally, a clear sign of full domestication. We do not know how many centuries earlier teosinte was transformed into maize, but archaeologist Bruce Smith believes the process took place more than 150 miles (250 Kilometers) weat of Tehuacan, in river valleys that flow from the highlands into the Pacific-areas where the wild teosinte that is most biochemically similar to maize still grows today.
Maize was domesticated in Mesoamerica at about the time the Pyramids of Giza were built along the Nile River. Corn was probably also domesticated in the tropical lowlands, perhaps even earlier then in the highlands, but the evidence is still sketchy. The primitive form of domesticated eight-rowed maize (Maiz de ocho) represented at Techuacan was the common ancestral corn that spread thousands of miles from its original homeland. Subsequent derivatives of this basic maize developed elsewhere throughout of the Americas. If Kent Flannery's hypothesis is coreect, plant domestication in Mesoamerica was noit so much an invention in one small area as a shift in ecological adaptation delberately chosen by peoples living where economic stratagoes necessitated intensive exploitiation of plant foods. It appears that the evidence from oth Techucan and Guila Naquitz bears out this hypothesis.
Andean Farmers
The story of plant domestication in Mexico shows how it was a deliberate shift in ecological adaptation. The same shift occurred in two areas of the Andean region ¦ in the mountain highlands and along the low-lying¸ arid Pacific coast.
The great eighteen-century German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt was the first European scientist to explore the high Andes. He marveled at the great variety of wild plants and animals that thrived in the harsh and varied landscape of high peaks and mountain valleys. Only a handful of these many species had been tamed by the farmers living in the foothills of the great mountains. Five important Andean species were of vital importance to highland economies. Five important Andes species were of vital importance to highland economies: the llama¸ alpaca¸ and guinea pig¸ also the potato and a grain crop¸ quinoa. Llamas were perhaps domesticated alongside quinoa¸ perhaps as early as 2500 B.C.E. Llama herding was widespread throughout the highlands and along the north coast of Peru by 900 B.C.E. Guinea pigs¸ an important wild food for many thousands of years¸ may have been domesticated in high mountain valleys at about the same time.
At the time European contact in the fifteenth century C.E.¸ Andean farmers used literally hundreds of potato varieties. Four major strains were domesticated in the highlands¸ of which one¸ Solanum tubersum, is now grown all over the world. Wild potatoes were an important food for highland Andean foragers from the time of earliest settlement. Well-documented potato tubers come from midden sites dating to about 2000 B.C.E. at the mouth of the Casma Valley on the Peruvian coast, but earlier specimens will undoubtedly come to light in the south-central highlands, where other animal and plant species, including lima beans, were domesticated between 3000 and 2000 B.C.E.
The Peruvian coast forms a narrow shelf at the foot of the Andes, an arid desert strip dissected by river valleys with deep, rich soils and plentiful water for some of the year. For thousands of years, coastal communities lived off the incredible bounty of the Pacific and gathered wild plants in summer. Fishing may have assumed greater importance after 5000 B.C.E. , when the climate was warmer and drier than today. By this time the people were also cultivating some plant species like squash, peppers, and tuberous begonias.
At large¸ more or less permanent¸ coastal settlements like Chilca and Polma ¸ fish and mollusks were staples, but the inhabitants also ground up wild grass seeds into flour and grew squashes. By 3800 B.C.E.º the Chilca people were growing several types of beans¸ including the ubiquitous lima¸ and squashes. They lived in circular matting and reeds huts erected on frameworks of canes or occasionally whale bones. The succeeding millennia saw many permanent settlements established near the Pacific¸ the people combining agriculture with fishing mollusk gathering. However¸ fish and sea mammals were so abundant that agriculture remained a secondary activity much later that it did in Mesoamerica.
Within a remarkably short time¸ more–complex farming societies developed out of the simple village communities of earlier centuries. In some regions¸ these developments led rapidly to the emergence of state -organized societies¸ the world´s first civilizations. In others¸ egalitarian farming cultures became elaborate chiefdoms¸ in remarkably effective adaptations to challenging environments. In our next section we will examine some of these remarkable societies and the issue of greater cultural complexity in farming societies.
Summary
Southwest Asia was cool and dry immediately after the Ice Age¸ with dry steppe over much of the interior. Farming began at Abu Hureyra on the Euphrates River in about 10,000 B.C.E. and sheep and goats replaced gazelle hunting abruptly at the same site and other settlements after 9000 B.C.E. Herding was well established somewhat earlier in the Zargos highlands¸ while Anatolia was inhabited by farming communities linked by long distance exchange routes by at least 8500 B.C.E.
Agriculture and animal husbandry developed in southeastern Europe because of a local shift to the more intensive exploitation of cereals and wild sheep, and also because of a “drift” of domestic animals and cereals across from Southwest Asia. The widely distributed Bandkeramik complex documents the first settlement of southeastern European farmers in the Middle Danube Valley and on the light loess soils of central Europe around 5000 B.C.E. During the next millennium¸ food production spread widely throughout Europe, largely in the hands of indigenous foragers, who adopted sheep, pottery and cereals¸ which they considered of immediate advantage to them. Food production was probably introduced into Egypt´s Nile Valley at a time of drought¸ by 7000 B.C.E. As the Sahara Desert dried up after 3000 B.C.E.¸ pastoralists with cereal crops moved south of the desert¸ introducing cattle herding as far south as the East African highlands. In the southern China¸ rice was apparently cultivated as early as 9500 B.C.E. Widespread rice agriculture was well established by 6500 B.C.E. The staple in the Haung Ho Valley of northern China was millet¸ cultivated at least as early 6500 B.C.E.¸ perhaps much earlier. Maize was the most important cereal in the Americans, domesticated from a Central American native grass named teosinte as early as 4000 B.C.E. Maize agriculture spread from southern Mexico and Guatemala thousands of miles to the north and south. There were farmers in the highland Andes and in coastal Peru by 3000 B.C.E., but maize did not become a vital cultivated staple until a thousand years later.
