Amazonian crops first domesticated 10,000 years ago

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An international team of researchers have confirmed a fifth domestication area in southwestern Amazonia where manioc, squash and other edibles became garden plants during the early Holocene, starting over 10,000 years ago.

“Our results confirm the Llanos de Moxos as a hotspot for early plant cultivation, and demonstrate that ever since their arrival, humans have caused a profound alteration of Amazonian landscapes, with lasting repercussions for habitat heterogeneity and species conservation,” the researchers report in Nature.

“Archaeologists, geographers and biologists have argued for many years that Southwestern Amazonia was a probable center of early plant domestication because many important cultivars like manioc, squash, peanuts and some varieties of chili pepper and beans are genetically very close to wild plants living here,” said Lombardo, who was lead author on the paper. “However, until this recent study, scientist had neither searched for, nor excavated, old archaeological sites in this region that might document the pre-Columbian domestication of these globally important crops.”

The researchers suggest that their data indicate that the earliest inhabitants of Southwestern Amazonia were not just hunter-gatherers, but engaged in plant cultivation in the early Holocene. The earliest people in the area may have arrived to the region already possessing a mixed economy.

S: https://www.heritagedaily.com/2020/04/amazonian-crops-domesticated-10000-years-ago/127478

[Woolfsmck 2,763]

Yeah....south and central america has advanced old civilizations that Europe and Asia didn't know were there...

 

All modern potatoes originated from Peru...