FOOD PLANTS OF ANCIENT AMERICA. 491 



further extended by the discovery that the fruits could be stored in 

 covered pits, the prototypes of the modern silo. 



In Abj'ssinia the tender heart of the banana, there cultivated as a 

 root crop, is fermented in a similar manner and then baked into 

 cakes." 



FROM KOOT CROPS TO CEREALS. 



If the domestication of the banana is to be ascribed to cultivators of 

 root crops, the same reasoning applies with even greater propriety to 

 cereals. Tribes accustomed to subsist on mangoes, dates, figs, or 

 similar fruits which require no grating, grinding, or cooking, and are 

 eaten alone and not with meat, would not develop the food habits and 

 culinary arts necessary to equip primitive man for utilizing the cereals. 



Wild bananas and their botanical relatives are natives of the rocky 

 slopes of mountainous regions of the moist tropics, where shrubs and 

 trees prevent the growth of ordinary herbaceous vegetation. The 

 commencement of the culture of cereals by fruit-eating natives of 

 such forest-covered regions is obviously improbable, but would be a 

 comparatively easy transition for the meal-eating cultivators of root 

 crops, since the grasses and other plants domesticated for their seeds 

 are exactly those which flourish in cleared ground and are prompt to 

 take advantage of the cultural efforts intended for other crops. Thus 

 the Japanese have by selection secured a useful cereal from the com- 

 mon barnyard grass {Panicum crus-galU), just as they have made a 

 root crop of the burdock. Accordingly, we should look to some taro- 

 growing tribe of southeastern Asia as the probable domesticators of 

 rice, sesame, and Guinea corn. That root crops preceded cereals in 

 America was inferred above partly from the fact that root crops were 

 not there grown from seeds, and there is a corresponding indication 

 that the knowledge of cereals preceded the domestication of the seed- 

 grown temperate root crops of the Old World, since none of these is 

 anywhere dried, made into starch, or otherwise prepared for storage 

 as the basis of a permanent food supply of primitive tribes. 



Without the winter protection which primitive man could not sup- 

 ply, the culture of cassava and other tropical root crops is confined to 

 strictly tropical climates, so that increase of latitude and altitude 

 would bring to starch-eating peoples the necessity of a change of food 

 plants. Indeed, altitude seems to have played a larger part than lati- 

 tude in this transformation which brought about the adoption by 

 primitive American peoples of Indian corn, "Irish" potato, arracacha, 

 oca, and other crops of the temperate plateaus of South America. 



Without reasonable doubt, maize is the oldest of cereals. The large 

 soft kernels which distinguish it from all other food grasses would 

 render it easily available among the meal-eating aborigines of America, 



« Warburg, in Engler, Deutsch Oat-Africa, Nutzpflanzen, 100. 1895. In the lake 

 regions of Central Africa the rootstocks of the fruit-bearing varieties of the banana 

 are also pounded, dried, and made into meal, especially in times of scarcity. 



