Farming in Americas Dates as Early as Mideast
Archaeologists writing agriculture’s history are gaining new insight
from ancient food remains. They are tracing the progress of crop
domestication through genetic changes recorded in DNA samples. This new
perspective has already punctured the notion that agriculture was slow
off the mark in the Americas. As recently reported research in northern
Peru illustrates, agriculture’s roots run back some 10,000 years in the
Americas, just as they do in the Middle East.
Meanwhile, studies of DNA from ancient and
modern cultivated wheats and their wild relatives trace the
domestication of this wonder plant over thousands of years. They reveal
how wheat’s genetic nimbleness allowed breeders to adapt it to a
variety of environments to the point where it now supplies 20 percent
of humanity’s food calories.
Science notes: The Americas weren’t farming laggards, after all | csmonitor.com
