Squash Grown 10,000 Years Ago In Peru, page 1

Originally posted by mojo4sale
Its really more about when cultivation and trade began though really isnt it, from the original article, not necessarily when the area was first populated. And does that mean that those sth american civilisations are much older than originally thought, not just scattered tribes.

the oldest trace of civilisation and widespread farming are from around 4000bce in the norte chico valley which resulted in places like Caral and Aspero
en.wikipedia.org...
en.wikipedia.org...

before that useful things like squash gourds would have been widely prized trade items being passed from one tribe to another and on down through family lines
the lack of any evidence that the Gourds were cultivated was a bit telling in the original article
here are the two quotes from the anthropologist Tom D. Dillehay of Vanderbilt University

“We believe the development of agriculture by the Nanchoc people served as a catalyst for cultural and social changes that eventually led to intensified agriculture, institutionalized political power and new towns in the Andean highlands and along the coast 4,000 to 5,500 years ago,” Dillehay said.

and

“The plants we found in northern Peru did not typically grow in the wild in that area,” Dillehay said. “We believe they must have therefore been domesticated elsewhere first and then brought to this valley by traders or mobile horticulturists.

the rest is speculation on the part of Randolph E. Schmid who is lets face it a journalist
he seems to have added this quote

“Many scholars, including myself, believe that the profound environmental transitions and associated changes in the distribution and abundance of wild plants and animals that occurred around the world as the ice age was ending 11,000-10,000 years ago was significant in the development of agriculture in several geographically widespread places at this time,” Piperno commented.

from Dolores Piperno, curator for archaeobotany and South American archaeology at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History just to add weight to his argument without actually elucidating on the fact that she isn't saying the ice age ended 10,000 years ago and people were farming ten minutes later. the changes she is talking about took thousands of years to take place
when you look for other evidence like I did in a previous post you find that nothing is dated to 10,000bce that proves farming
there is a big difference between trading items that grow naturally and understanding the connection between seeds, sun and water.....

all the early South American cultures from the Supe Valley to the Mojos culture (excavated by Katsuyoshi Sanematsu if you want to google it) relied heavily on fishing for their food
this doesn't indicate they relied upon or even needed vegetables in any large quantity.....
if there had been widespread farming earlier than this then why were all the best known cultures not doing it thousands of years later.........

heres a clue though
all these vegetables so far discovered and believed to be evidence of agriculture are of the type that have seeds integrated into the flesh of the plant (i.e. not produced in inedible pods) that are unaffected by the human digestive system
now I wonder what they used for fertiliser
theres a line from Crocodile Dundee I'm thinking of right now
know the one I mean