[Aztlan] Earliest Peanut, Cotton and Squash Farming in Peru

[michael ruggeri]

Earliest-known Evidence of Peanut, Cotton and Squash Farming Found

Newswise — Anthropologists working on the slopes of the Andes in  
northern Peru have discovered the earliest-known evidence of peanut,  
cotton and squash farming dating back 5,000 to 9,000 years. Their  
findings provide long-sought-after evidence that some of the early  
development of agriculture in the New World took place at farming  
settlements in the Andes.

The discovery was published in the June 29 issue of Science.

The research team made their discovery in the Ñanchoc Valley, which  
is approximately 500 meters above sea level on the lower western  
slopes of the Andes in northern Peru.

“We believe the development of agriculture by the Ñanchoc people  
served as a catalyst for cultural and social changes that eventually  
led to intensified agriculture, institutionalized political power and  
new towns in the Andean highlands and along the coast 4,000 to 5,500  
years ago,” Tom D. Dillehay, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology  
at Vanderbilt University and lead author on the publication, said.  
“Our new findings indicate that agriculture played a broader role in  
these sweeping developments than was previously understood.”

Dillehay and his colleagues found wild-type peanuts, squash and  
cotton as well as a quinoa-like grain, manioc and other tubers and  
fruits in the floors and hearths of buried preceramic sites, garden  
plots, irrigation canals, storage structures and on hoes. The  
researchers used a technique called accelerator mass spectrometry to  
determine the radiocarbon dates of the materials. Data gleaned from  
botanists, other archaeological findings and a review of the current  
plant community in the area suggest the specific strains of the  
discovered plant remains did not naturally grow in the immediate area.

“The plants we found in northern Peru did not typically grow in the  
wild in that area,” Dillehay said. “We believe they must have  
therefore been domesticated elsewhere first and then brought to this  
valley by traders or mobile horticulturists.

“The use of these domesticated plants goes along with broader  
cultural changes we believe existed at that time in this area, such  
as people staying in one place, developing irrigation and other water  
management techniques, creating public ceremonials, building mounds  
and obtaining and saving exotic artifacts.”

The researchers dated the squash from approximately 9,200 years ago,  
the peanut from 7,600 years ago and the cotton from 5,500 years ago.

Dillehay published the findings with fellow researchers Jack Rossen,  
Ithaca College, Ithaca, N.Y.; Thomas C. Andres, The Curcurbit  
Network, New York, N.Y.; and David E. Williams, U.S. Department of  
Agriculture, Washington, D.C.
Dillehay is chair of the Department of Anthropology at Vanderbilt,  
Professor Extraordinaire at the Universidad Austral de Chile and was  
elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2007.

The research was supported by the Instituto Nacional de Cultura,  
Lima; the National Science Foundation; the Heinz Foundation; the  
University of Kentucky and Vanderbilt University.

Visit Exploration, the university’s multimedia online science  
journal, at http://www.exploration.vanderbilt.edu for more Vanderbilt  
research news.



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