Merrill 



Plants and Civilizations 



plants and animals, and all the really 

 important ones, came from certain re- 

 stricted areas in North and South 

 America and Eurasia. These regions are 

 essentially the highland of Mexico and 

 contiguous areas in North America; of 

 Peru, Bolivia and Chile in South Amer- 

 ica, and in Eurasia certain parts of 

 China, northern India, Central Asia, 

 Asia Minor and perhaps Abyssinia. 



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It should be noted that the centers 

 of origin of agriculture and of civiliza- 

 tion are in general characterized by an 

 equable type of climate, without great 

 extremes of heat and cold, and in gen- 

 eral with a restricted rainfall. They are 

 to be classed as subtemperate or sub- 

 tropical, rather than as temperate or 

 tropical, presenting from the stand- 

 point of primitive man neither the 

 rigors of the colder temperate regions 

 nor the equally evident disadvantages 

 of the deep tropics. 



Even more impressive is the fact 

 that those centers in which ancient civi- 

 lizations developed, whether in the 

 Old World or in the New, are the 

 same as those wherein our basic culti- 

 vated food plants and domesticated 

 animals originally occurred as feral 

 species. There is thus a ver}' close cor- 

 relation between the places of origin 

 of cultivated plants and domesticated 

 animals and the places of origin of early 

 civilizations. . . . Thus in Mexico may 

 be listed as basic species maize, beans 

 and the sweet potato; in Peru the po- 

 tato, maize and beans; in Central Asia, 

 Asia Minor and perhaps very limited 

 parts of the Mediterranean basin cer- 

 tain cereals, including rye, barley, 

 wheat and oats; in India and China rice 

 and perhaps millet and sorghum. . . . 



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The number of described species of 

 plants is probably in excess of 350,000. 



11 



Most of these are of no particular eco- 

 nomic value. The number of cultivated 

 agricultural plants, even including 

 strictly forage plants, is relatively small, 

 a few hundred at most, while what 

 might be called the food plants basic 

 to civilization are limited to a few 

 score. 



A brief consideration of the strictly 

 American species of cultivated plants 

 will give us some graphic idea of the 

 important contributions of early man 

 in America to modern agriculture. It 

 should be kept in mind that in the fol- 

 lowing long and rather impressive list 

 not a single species was known in 

 Europe or in Asia until the close of 

 the fifteenth centur\'. America pro- 

 duced but one cereal, but that one the 

 most important maize or Indian corn. 

 Other important food plants were the 

 potato, sweet potato, cassava, all va- 

 rieties of field and garden beans, as well 

 as the lima, scarlet runner, tepari and 

 yam beans, tomato, pepper, sunflower, 

 Jerusalem artichoke, squash, pumpkin, 

 arrowroot, peanut, chayote, papaya, 

 avocado, pineapple, custard apple, 

 soursop, cherimoya, guava, cacao, 

 cashew, sapote, white sapote, sapodilla, 

 star apple and mamei. These are now 

 widely cultivated in appropriate regions 

 in both hemispheres, some being 

 strictly tropical, others also extensively 

 planted in temperate regions. Particu- 

 larly in South America, a number of 

 other native species were and are still 

 grown for food, but which have not be- 

 come of importance in other regions. 

 They include the ulluco ( Ullucus), oca 

 (Oxalis), anyu (Tropaeolum) , yautia 

 {Xanthosoma) , llacou (Polymnia) , ar- 

 racacha {Arracacia), achira {Canna), 

 jataco (Amaranthus) and quinoa 

 (Chenopodium) . In Peru alone it is 

 estimated that about 70 native species 

 had been domesticated in pre-Colum- 

 bian times, although some of these 

 were not food plants, including cotton, 

 tobacco and various ornamental and 



