Direct archaeological evidence for Southwestern Amazonia as an early plant domestication and food production centre.

Jennifer Watling,Fernando O Almeida,Eduardo G Neves,Myrtle P Shock,Guilherme Z Mongeló,Thiago Kater,Paulo E De Oliveira,John P Hart

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0199868

Abstract

Southwestern Amazonia is considered an early centre of plant domestication in the New World, but most of the evidence for this hypothesis comes from genetic data since systematic archaeological fieldwork in the area is recent. This paper provides first-hand archaeobotanical evidence of food production from early and middle Holocene (ca. 9,000–5000 cal. BP) deposits at Teotonio, an open-air site located on a 40 m-high bluff on the south bank of the Madeira river. Such evidence includes the presence of local and exotic domesticates such as manioc (Manihot esculenta), squash (Cucurbita sp.) and beans (Phaseolus sp.), alongside edible fruits such as pequiá (Caryocar sp.) and guava (Psidium sp.) that point to the beginnings of landscape domestication. The results contribute to an ever-growing number of studies that posit southwest Amazonia as an important centre for early crop domestication and experimentation, and which highlight the longue-durée of human impacts on tropical forest biodiversity around the world.

Highlights

Southwestern Amazonia is considered an independent centre of plant domestication in the New World [1,2,3]
Should its presence be confirmed in the future, it would add to other studies that document this crop–which was possibly domesticated in the seasonal forests of Central and northern South America [41]–in some of the earliest food production systems in the New World
The evidence we have presented for manioc and squash cultivation associated with ADE contexts dating to between 6,500–5,500 cal

Summary

Introduction

Southwestern Amazonia is considered an independent centre of plant domestication in the New World [1,2,3]. The seasonal forests of the upper Madeira and Guaporeriver watersheds were where manioc (Manihot esculenta), peanut (Arachis hypogea), anato (Bixa orellana), the peach palm (Bactris gasipaes), rice (Oryza sp.) and, more tentatively, one squash (Cucurbita maxima) and one chilli species (Capsicum baccatum) were initially domesticated [1,3,4]. Most of these plants have a social and economic importance today that transcends the Amazon, but perhaps the most remarkable of them is manioc, a root crop which feeds at least 500 million people throughout the tropics [5].

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion