Class 13 - Origins of Agriculture in Mesoamerica

What plants and animals were domesticated in each of the SE regions: Eastern North America, Mesoamerica, and the Andes?

Eastern North America: goosefoot, sunflowers, gourds (for containers), iva (marsh elder), later corn and bean

Mesoamerica: beans, squash, gourds, avocados, and turkeys, and corn/maize

Andean South America: sweet potato, yuca, oca, potatos, ulluco, chilli peppers

What were the main results of MacNeish’s Tehuacan Valley project?

Domesticating corn was not sudden like wheat and barley took 1000 years

How did Kent Flannery test theories of the origins of agriculture? What are the 4 parts of this project?

Computer landscape → simulation of a hunter-gatherer population

4 parts:

1. excavation of rock shelters and open campsites

2. resource abundance surveys

3. nutrition of wild foods

4. computer simulation of hunting and gathering

What types of sites were Gheo-Shih, Cueva Blanca, and Guila Naquitiz?

Gheo-Shih: wet season camp with macrobands on the floor valley

Cuevo Blanca: hunting camp

Guila Naquitiz: dry season camp for microbands (rock shelter) to forage (land of abundance)

What were the results of Flannery’s project? Were climate change of population pressure responsible for the origins of agriculture in the valley?

Food shortages did not drive people to agriculture because there was an abundance

The shift from warmer to drier conditions which they had adapted to

What does Flannery’s explanation mean?

Typically women are foraging with children and with a certain amount of unpredictability on the harvest for patches and wanted to take less time with higher predictability

What was that feedback cycle, and where did this feedback lead?

Increase in yields → population increase → need for increased yields → genetic selection

End result was eating corn, beans, and squash in villages as full time farmers and health declines dramatically

How did the transition to agriculture differ in Mesoamerica and the Middle East?

The transition is different because in the ME they were driven by climate change while Mesoamerica was not