562 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1960 



Coastal Peru, at the southern end of Nuclear America, provides a 

 rainless climate and splendid conditions for preservation of organic 

 materials in open archeological sites, and it is in Peru that we have 

 glimpsed what appears to be a second tradition of incipient plant 

 cultivation in Nuclear America. At Huaca Prieta, in a great hill of 

 marine shells, sea-urchin spines, ash, and other debris, cultivated 

 squash, peppers, gourds, cotton, and a local bean {Canavalia) were 

 found, along with an abundance of wild root plants and fruits. The 

 people who raised and gathered these crops and seafoods lived at 

 Huaca Prieta at least 2,000 years before the Christian Era, TVliether 

 there was, however indirectly, an exchange of domesticated plants 

 between these early Peruvians and their contemporaries m Middle 

 America is not certain. Such connections could liave existed ; or the 

 beginnings of cultivation may have been truly independent of each 

 other in these two areas of Nuclear America. Definite connections 

 between early farmers of Middle America and of Peru appear, how- 

 ever, by 700 B.C. with the sudden presence of maize in Peru [39]. 

 This maize was not, like that at Bat Cave or in the La Perra culture 

 of Tamaulipas, of an extremely primitive kind. It was brought, or it 

 spread, to Peru as a relatively well-developed plant, and it serves as a 

 link to Middle America. We may conclude that Nuclear America 

 possessed, from this time forward, a single major horticultural tradi- 

 tion, but by this time we have also passed beyond the clu^onological 

 limits of cultivation incipience. 



An ancient tradition of plant cultivation in the South American 

 tropical forest [40] is based upon the presumption that a long period 

 of experimentation was necessary for the domestication of such tropi- 

 cal root crops as bitter and sweet manioc {Manihot utilissima, M. api) 

 and the yam {Ipomoea batatas). It seems reasonably certain that 

 these domesticates date back to before 1000 B.C. in lowland Vene- 

 zuela. This is inferred from the presence of pottery griddles, of the 

 sort used for cooking manioc cakes in later times, in the Saladero 

 phase at the Orinoco Delta by this date [32]. Also, the early archeo- 

 logical phase of ISIomil I, in Caribbean Colombia, has the pottery 

 manioc griddle [41]. The dating of Momil I is debatable, but some 

 of the ceramic traits suggest a date as early as 2000 B.C. Saladero 

 and Momil I are, however, outside the chronological and develop- 

 mental range of incipient-cultivation patterns. They appear to be 

 village sites based upon the cultivation of root crops, and as such 

 they are comparable to, although historically separate from, village 

 farming based on maize. I shall return to this point further along. 

 For the present I bring these sites into the discussion because their 

 existence implies centuries, or even millennia, of prior incipient root- 

 crop cultivation in tropical nortliem South America. 



