The First Plant Domestication

2. The First Plant Domestication • Introduction - The Native Americans domesticated an impressive range of native New World plants, some of which—like maize, potatoes, and tobacco—were rapidly adopted by farmers on other continents after European contact. • The most important staple crop was Indian corn, properly called maize, the only significant wild grass in the New World to be fully domesticated.

3. The First Plant Domestication • Squashes and a plant called leren were probably the first domesticates. • Bottle gourds were invaluable containers for holding liquids both before and after domestication. • Domesticated gourd remains come from Guilá Naquitz in the Valley of Oaxaca as early as 8000 B.C. • Domesticated squash was also in use in Mesoamerica as early as 8000 B.C.

4. The First Plant Domestication • The Origins of Maize Agriculture • Probably domesticated from a Central American native grass called teosinte as early as 4000 B.C. • There is indirect evidence of even earlier maize cultivation, before 5000 B.C. at San Andrés on the Gulf coast.

5. The First Plant Domestication • Beans • The domestication of beans may have occurred at much the same time as that of maize, but there is, at present, no archaeological evidence of the first stages of cultivation of this all-important staple.

6. Early Food Production in the Andes • The Highlands • Five important Andean species were of vital importance to highland economies: the llama, the alpaca, and the guinea pig, as well as the potato and a grain crop, quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa). • The Peruvian Coast • On the Ecuadorian and Peruvian coasts, people supplemented fishing and the gathering of vegetable foods with irrigation farming as early as 3000 B.C.

7. Early Food Production in the Andes • The Peruvian Coast (cont.) • Paloma site on the central coast was occupied earlier than 5500 B.C. • Relied heavily on fishing and gathering but also manipulated some plant species, including tuberous begonias, gourds, squashes, and peppers. • Playa Culebras site - first appearance of Maize • The new crop was soon grown on a considerable scale in large irrigation systems in coastal river valleys.

8. Early Farmers in Southwestern North America • The earliest Mesoamerican crops to cross the Rio Grande were maize, beans, and squash. • The chapalote form of maize, a small popcorn of great genetic diversity may have arrived during a period of higher rainfall between 2000 and 1500 B.C. • It was soon crossbred with the indigenous wild teosinte, the result being a highly varied, more productive hybrid maize with larger cobs and more kernel rows.

9. Early Farmers in Southwestern North America • A radically different maize, maíz de ocho, was the key to new cultural developments in the Southwest. • Maíz de ocho, with its large, more productive, flowery kernels, may have evolved from earlier, highly variable Chapalote maize.

10. Early Farmers in Southwestern North America • Hohokam • Snaketown site: major settlement • Hohokam subsistence was based on maize, beans, cucurbits, cotton, and other crops, as well as on gathering. • The Hohokam enjoyed complex trading and ceremonial relationships with peoples living all over the Southwest and in northern Mexico. • Five stages of Hohokam culture, culminating in a classical period from approximately A.D. 1100 to 1450.

11. Early Farmers in Southwestern North America • Mogollon • Emerged from Archaic roots between 300 B.C. and A.D. 200 and disappeared as a separate entity between A.D. 850 and 1000 to 1150. • An agricultural tradition in which hunting and gathering in the highlands were always important. • Much of the Mogollon area was completely abandoned by A.D. 1500.

12. Early Farmers in Southwestern North America • Ancestral Pueblo (Anasazi) • Centered in the Four Corners area, where Utah, Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico meet. • The Ancestral Pueblo people made heavy use of wild vegetable foods, even after they took up maize agriculture seriously, after A.D. 400.

13. Early Farmers in Southwestern North America • Ancestral Pueblo (Anasazi) • One major center of Ancestral Pueblo culture developed in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. • Pueblo Bonito • Kivas • Another serious drought cycle between A.D. 1276 and 1299 saw dozens of Ancestral Pueblo settlements large and small disperse into less affected regions, where they joined groups ancestral to modern Pueblo Indian communities.

14. Preagricultural and Agricultural Societies in Eastern North America • Many groups in eastern North America turned to the deliberate cultivation of native plants as food supplements after 2000 B.C. • Maize and bean agriculture did not arrive from the Southwest until the first millennium B.C. • After 1000 B.C. a series of powerful chiefdoms arose in the Southeast and the Midwest, peoples among whom elaborate burial customs and the building of burial mounds and earthworks were commonplace.

15. Moundbuilder Cultures • Early Woodland (Adena) • Adena tradition (early Woodland) appeared in about 700 B.C. • Between 500 B.C. and about A.D. 400, Early Woodland people flourished in the Ohio Valley. • Powerful loyalties to local lineages caused the people to commemorate their dead not only with imposing burial mounds but with extensive earthworks as well. • Adena was overlapped by the Hopewell in approximately A.D. 1.

16. Moundbuilder Cultures • Hopewell - a later elaboration of eastern North American ceremonial traditions that first appeared in Illinois in about A.D. 1. • Lived in relatively small settlements and used only stone artifacts to plant, hunt game, and fish • A Hopewell burial mound complex in Ohio, appropriately named Mound City, contains no fewer than 24 mounds inside an enclosure covering 15.2 ha (32 acres)

17. Moundbuilder Cultures • Mississippian • About A.D. 800, the focus of economic, religious, and political power shifted to the Mississippi Valley and the Southeast with the rise of the Mississippian tradition. • This tradition, with its powerful religious and secular leaders, survived in a modified form until European contact in the sixteenth century A.D.

18. Human Settlement in the Caribbean • First Settlement (Preceramic Cultures) • The earliest traces of human settlement in the Caribbean date to between 4000 and 3500 B.C., hunter- gatherers from the Yucatán Peninsula. • By 2000 B.C., people had settled throughout the Caribbean, as seafaring, Preceramic immigrants, this time from South America, moved into the Lesser Antilles and as far north as Puerto Rico.

19. Human Settlement in the Caribbean • Saladoid Migrations • Between 500 B.C. and A.D. 100, Saladoid people with distinctive painted pottery brought cassava and other crops to the islands. • Táino Chiefdoms • The following centuries saw the first settlement of the Bahamas and the development of Taíno chiefdoms after A.D. 700, which exhibited considerable diversity and traded widely. • The arrival of the Spaniards in 1492 led to the rapid destruction of these dynamic Caribbean cultures.