Wellmann Imre szerk.: A Magyar Mezőgazdasági Múzeum Közleményei 1971-1972 (Budapest, 1973)

Gunda, Béla: Origin of plant cultivation in the New World

ORIGIN OF PLANT CULTIVATION IN THE NEW WORLD BÉLA GUNDA (Debrecen, Hungary) Ever since prehistorioal times man is engaged in two universal and successful (though as yet unaccomplished) experiments. The one is the domestication of animals, the other plant cultivation. Each of them determines the development of mankind in a different way. By breeding animals living in herds man has arrived as far as nomadism. The breeders of such animals became aggressive and martial peoples whose activity is recorded in the chronicles of foreign peoples. The way of life and the habits of various "barbaric" peoples have thus been recorded by the Chinese. Plant cultivation led to peaceful settled life and subsequently to regular industrial activity. Monumental works of art preserve the memory of the early agricultural peoples — such as in Egypt and Peru, to name just a few. When, some 15—20 000 years ago (datings to earlier times are merely hypothetical) the first precursors of the Indians, the Palaeo-Indian groups have passed through the isthmus (at the place of the actual Bering Strait) from NorthEastern Asia to Alaska, even the most primitive forms of agriculture and plant cultivation were unknown to them. With the cultivation of different plants they developed this activity at various places and different times in North and South America. By doing so they became participants to the above mentioned largescale series of experiments. As shown by recent archaeological and ethnological examinations, plant cultivation has developed in the New World in four major centres: 1. the Peruvian coast, 2. the Tehuacan Valley (Southern Central Mexiko). 3. the southern Tamaulipas region (North-Eastern Mexico), 4. Arizona, New Mexico, South Colorado. In a certain way, the area eastwards from the Mississippi may be also regarded as a plant cultivation centre, but plant cultivation began much later here than in New Mexico or Mexico. In prehistorical times there have been cultivated plants to the west of the Mississippi (e.g. Chenopodium) which played no important role in the later plant-growing culture of the New World. Plant cultivation is probably the oldest in the Tehuacan and Tamaulipas regions, where a primitive kind of plant-growing was already practised 8000— 9000 years ago. So for instance the rests of Lagenaria siceraria, Cucurbita pepo, Capsicum annuum and of a bean-sort have been found already in the Infiernillo phase (Tamaulipas). The pertinent results are primarily known from the research work of R.S. MACNEISH, G.F. CARTER. P.C. MANGELSDORF, M.A. TOWLE and others. Without repeating their conclusions I merely refer here to the important state-