Squash Seeds Show Andean Cultivation Is 10,000 Years Old, Twice as Old as Thought - New... - 0 views
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Seeds of domesticated squash found by scientists on the western slopes of the Andes in northern Peru are almost 10,000 years old, about twice the age of previously discovered cultivated crops in the region, new, more precise dating techniques have revealed.
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The excavations also yielded peanut hulls and cotton fibers — about 8,500 and 6,000 years old, respectively
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Their research also turned up traces of other domesticated plants, including a grain, manioc and unidentified fruits, and stone hoes, furrowed garden plots and small-scale irrigation canals from approximately the same period of time.
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The article also noted that 10,000-year-old cultivated squash seeds had recently been reported in Mexico, along with evidence of domesticated corn there by 9,000 years ago. Scholars now think that plants were domesticated independently in at least 10 “centers of origin,” including, in addition to the Middle East, Mexico and Peru, places in Africa, southern India, China and New Guinea.
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In the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East, an arc from modern-day Israel through Syria and Turkey to Iraq, wheat and barley were domesticated by 10,000 years ago, and possibly rye by 13,000 years ago. Experts in ancient agriculture suspect that the transition from foraging to cultivation had started much earlier and was not as abrupt a transformation as indicated in the archaeological record.
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The distribution of building structures, canals and furrowed fields, Dr. Dillehay said, indicated that the Andean culture was moving beyond cultivation limited to individual households toward an organized agricultural society.