Early Agriculture in the Maya Lowlands

Pohl, Mary; Pope, Kevin; Jones, John G.; Jacob, John; Piperno, Dolores R.; deFrance, Susan D.; Lentz, David L.; Gifford, John; Danforth, Marie Elaine; Josserand, J. Kathryn

doi:10.2307/972264

Cited by 262 publications

(200 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…For example, even though maize had been cultivated in the 2,000 km 2 of the Valley of Oaxaca for at least 2,000 years, the total Late Archaic population at any given time is estimated at 75-150 people, representing a maximum density of 0.075 persons/km 2 (57). In addition, except in lowland areas where swidden cultivation may have been practiced and soils were nutrient-poor, there is no indication that early Mesoamerican farmers migrated over any great distances for lack of arable land (80,81). Evidence of northwardmigrating populations also is absent in the late Middle Archaic archaeological record of northwestern Mexico (6,82).…”

Section: A Great Basin Homeland For the Uto-aztecansmentioning

confidence: 97%

The diffusion of maize to the southwestern United States and its impact

Merrill

Hard

Mabry

et al. 2009

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

158

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Our understanding of the initial period of agriculture in the southwestern United States has been transformed by recent discoveries that establish the presence of maize there by 2100 cal. B.C. (calibrated calendrical years before the Christian era) and document the processes by which it was integrated into local foraging economies. Here we review archaeological, paleoecological, linguistic, and genetic data to evaluate the hypothesis that Proto-Uto-Aztecan (PUA) farmers migrating from a homeland in Mesoamerica introduced maize agriculture to the region. We conclude that this hypothesis is untenable and that the available data indicate instead a Great Basin homeland for the PUA, the breakup of this speech community into northern and southern divisions Ϸ6900 cal. B.C. and the dispersal of maize agriculture from Mesoamerica to the US Southwest via group-to-group diffusion across a Southern UtoAztecan linguistic continuum.early agriculture ͉ migration ͉ US Southwest ͉ Mesoamerica ͉ Uto-Aztecan

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Section: A Great Basin Homeland For the Uto-aztecansmentioning

confidence: 97%

The diffusion of maize to the southwestern United States and its impact

Merrill

Hard

Mabry

et al. 2009

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

158

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“…These populations cultivated some domesticates but relied heavily on hunting, gathering, and fishing. Such foragers were certainly present in Belize and possibly in northern Peten, but evidence is still ambiguous in most other parts of the Maya lowlands (10,25,26). In the Pasión region and the central lowlands, lake core data indicate a decline in rainforest taxa and an increase in soil erosion starting between 2500 and 1500 B.C., but it is not clear whether these changes were a result of anthropogenic effects or climate drying (27,28).…”

Section: Interpretationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…(8,9). Some inhabitants of the Maya lowlands adopted maize and other domesticates possibly as early as 3400 B.C., but did not accept sedentary lifeways and ceramic use for many centuries (10). Once they began to establish villages with ceramic use around 1000 B.C., the subsequent social change was rapid.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Development of sedentary communities in the Maya lowlands: Coexisting mobile groups and public ceremonies at Ceibal, Guatemala

Inomata

MacLellan

Triadan

et al. 2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

100

141

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Our archaeological investigations at Ceibal, a lowland Maya site located in the Pasión region, documented that a formal ceremonial complex was built around 950 B.C. at the onset of the Middle Preclassic period, when ceramics began to be used in the Maya lowlands. Our refined chronology allowed us to trace the subsequent social changes in a resolution that had not been possible before. Many residents of Ceibal appear to have remained relatively mobile during the following centuries, living in ephemeral post-in-ground structures and frequently changing their residential localities. In other parts of the Pasión region, there may have existed more mobile populations who maintained the traditional lifestyle of the preceramic period. Although the emerging elite of Ceibal began to live in a substantial residential complex by 700 B.C., advanced sedentism with durable residences rebuilt in the same locations and burials placed under house floors was not adopted in most residential areas until 500 B.C., and did not become common until 300 B.C. or the Late Preclassic period. During the Middle Preclassic period, substantial formal ceremonial complexes appear to have been built only at a small number of important communities in the Maya lowlands, and groups with different levels of sedentism probably gathered for their constructions and for public rituals held in them. These collaborative activities likely played a central role in socially integrating diverse groups with different lifestyles and, eventually, in developing fully established sedentary communities.Mesoamerican archaeology | sedentism | Maya | public ceremony | subsistence R ecent archaeological investigations have shown that the development of agriculture and sedentism was more diverse than the simple model of agriculture leading to sedentism and then to social complexity. In Europe, for example, the farming lifestyle that originated in the Near East spread in complex ways, involving the coexistence of farmers and foragers in relatively small areas and differential adoptions of Neolithic cultural elements in different regions (1-3). Studies of early monuments, such as Göbekli Tepe in Turkey, Watson Brake in Louisiana, and Caral and earlier mounds in the Andes, show that large constructions involving significant collective labor could be built by preceramic people who were still foragers or were at the early stage of farming adaptation (4-7). These emerging understandings lead to important questions about how sedentary and mobile populations interacted and how their relations affected the process of social change. To address these questions, researchers need fine-grained chronological information and a broad spatial coverage, which are not easy to obtain in many cases. A uniquely rich dataset obtained from the Maya site of Ceibal (or Seibal) suggests the possibility that groups with different levels of mobility gathered and collaborated for constructions and public ceremonies, which contrasts with the common assumption that sedentary and mobile groups maintained...

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“…Por su parte, las condiciones culturales y ambientales en cada región promovieron la diversificación y la diferenciación genética. El cultivo del maíz y sus asociados se pudieron convertir en la herramienta biotecnológica que posibilitó estructurar sistemas agrícolas en un amplio rango de condiciones ecológicas limitativas, como en el caso de las áreas Olmeca, Maya y en las Antillas, en donde la milpa se complementó con cultivares suramericanos como Manihot, Dioscorea y Maranta (Pohl et al, 1996, Pohl, et al, 2007Pope et al, 2001;Colunga-GarcíaMarín & Zizumbo -illarreal, 2004;Pagán-Jiménez et al, 2015). ¿Qué significó la domesticación para las plantas y para los humanos?…”

Section: (Figura 2)unclassified

La milpa del occidente de Mesoamérica: profundidad histórica, dinámica evolutiva y rutas de dispersión a Suramérica

Zizumbo‐Villarreal

Colunga‐GarcíaMarín

2017

rga

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ResumenEl núcleo del sistema alimentario precerámico en el occidente de Mesoamérica se pudo integrar con las poblaciones silvestres ancestrales del maíz, el frijol y la calabaza. El manejo agrícola incipiente de estas especies, año tras año, en un mismo sitio pudo derivar en la estructuración del sistema agroalimentario conocido como "milpa". En este trabajo intentamos responder: 1. ¿Cómo y cuándo se pudo integrar el sistema agroalimentario de milpa?; 2. ¿Qué grupos culturales humanos lo pudieron conformar?; 3. ¿Pudo ser posible la domesticación de las poblaciones silvestres del maíz, las calabazas y los frijoles en varios sitios de América?, 4. ¿A través de qué rutas y cuándo se pudieron difundir estos cultivos? Integramos evidencias paleo-ecológicas arqueológicas, etnobotánicas y genético-moleculares; analizamos el significado de la domesticación y la importancia de estudiar la dinámica evolutiva de los complejos poblacionales silvestre-domesticado de las especies cultivadas en la milpa y puntualizamos los retos, amenazas y oportunidades para sus recursos genéticos. El núcleo del sistema agroalimentario Milpa se estructuró con especies de la selva baja caducifolia hace cerca de 9,000 años. El maíz pudo arribar a Panamá, Ecuador y Perú hace 7,400-6,500 años. Las poblaciones silvestres ancestrales de las calabazas y los frijoles pudieron ser domesticadas tanto en Mesoamérica como en Suramérica. Para las plantas, la domesticación significó su dependencia de los humanos, y para los humanos un alto costo social no valorado actualmente. El estudio de la dinámica evolutiva de los complejos poblacionales de la milpa nos ayuda a desarrollar estrategias de conservación y restauración, y a establecer los riesgos de escape de genes domésticos y transgenes. Los recursos fitogenéticos de la milpa enfrentan grandes amenazas a raíz de los cambios sociales y económicos provocados por la globalización de los mercados. Sin embargo, constituyen una herramienta fundamental para enfrentar el cambio climático.Palabras clave: Mesoamérica, sistema agro-alimentario, Cucurbita, Phaseolus, Zea. The Milpa system of western Mesoamerica: historical depth, evolutionary dynamics and dispersal routes to South Americao AbstractThe core of the pre-ceramic food system in western Mesoamerica could have been structured with the ancestral wild populations of maize, beans and squash; in turn, incipient agricultural management of these species, year after year, at the same site, could have given rise to the Milpa agri-food system. This paper attempts to answer the following questions: 1. How and when did the Milpa agri-food system originate?, 2. Which human groups could have done it?, 3 Could the domestication of the ancestral wild populations of maize, squash and beans have been possible at several sites in the Americas?, 4. What were the dispersal routes? To answer these questions, paleoecological, archaeological, ethno-botanical, and molecular genetic evidence was collated. The significance of domestication and the importance of studying the evolut...

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Early Agriculture in the Maya Lowlands

Cited by 262 publications

References 34 publications

The diffusion of maize to the southwestern United States and its impact

The diffusion of maize to the southwestern United States and its impact

Development of sedentary communities in the Maya lowlands: Coexisting mobile groups and public ceremonies at Ceibal, Guatemala

La milpa del occidente de Mesoamérica: profundidad histórica, dinámica evolutiva y rutas de dispersión a Suramérica

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