19 October 2000 =20
=20
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Nature 407, 894 - 897 (2000) =A9 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. =20
Starch grains reveal early root crop horticulture in the Panamanian
tropical=
=20
forest

DOLORES R. PIPERNO, ANTHONY J. RANERE, IRENE HOLST & PATRICIA HANSELL


Native American populations are known to have cultivated a large
number of=20
plants and domesticated them for their starch-rich underground
organs.=20
Suggestions that the likely source of many of these crops, the
tropical=20
forest, was an early and influential centre of plant husbandry have
long bee=
n=20
controversial because the organic remains of roots and tubers are
poorly=20
preserved in archaeological sediments from the humid tropics. Here we
report=
=20
the occurrence of starch grains identifiable as manioc (Manihot
esculenta=20
Crantz), yams (Dioscorea sp.) and arrowroot (Maranta arundinacea L.)
on=20
assemblages of plant milling stones from preceramic horizons at the
Aguadulc=
e=20
Shelter, Panama, dated between 7,000 and 5,000 years before present
(BP). Th=
e=20
artefacts also contain maize starch (Zea mays L.), indicating that
early=20
horticultural systems in this region were mixtures of root and seed
crops.=20
The data provide the earliest direct evidence for root crop
cultivation in=20
the Americas, and support an ancient and independent emergence of
plant=20
domestication in the lowland Neotropical forest.
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Nature =A9 Macmillan Publishers Ltd 2000 Registered No. 785998
England.=20