[Aztlan] Manioc planting

[Nick Hopkins]

Well, gee, guys, if the speakers of Proto-Mayan, around 2200 BC or  
so, had a word whose modern descendants throughout the family mean  
"manioc," what do you suppose the word referred to?  An as-yet  
unknown plant whose existence they only imagined?  Wild manioc?  Come  
on, there are lines of evidence other than archaeological ones that  
shed light on early agriculture.  It's no accident, for instance,  
that the plant names you can reconstruct for Proto-Otomanguean match  
almost perfectly the plant remains found in the Tehuacan excavations  
(and are contemporary).  So why the big surprise that Mayans may have  
cultivated manioc as "early" as 600 AD?  They had been talking about  
it for nearly 3000 years.

Nick Hopkins