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

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

ment of MACNEISH saying that we cannot speak of a neolithic revolution but of neolithic evolution in the New World. I should like to point out how the man of the New World has developed the idea of plant cultivation. Do we know about ethnobotanical activities among the Indians, which could indicate the beginning of agriculture or the way leading to it? The question may be definitely answered in the affirmative. In our days the Indians living to the north of Mexico are using about 1200 different plant species for domestic purposes. Only 2 per cent of them are cultivated plants. The ethnobotanical knowledge of the Navaho-Indians is a classic example of the knowledge of Indians on plants: they actually use 522 wild plant species for food, medical purposes, preparation of dye and various implements, cultic purposes etc. These facts show that the Indians actually possessed an adequate ethnobotanical knowledge enabling them to select among the numerous wild plants which could be cultivated. Of course, their cultivation experiments depended also on the different species, and not all of their experiments were successful. As a basic condition of plant cultivation the Indians had to know about the valuable properties of the plant while still in wild state. The beginnings of plant cultivation obviously coincide with intensive plant gathering. It may happen that a plant is being cultivated while, at the same time, its wild variants are gathered (e.g. Agave species avocado, Amaranthus palmeri). Such cases may prove that the "domestication" of the plants involved — though eventually practised for a long time — is still at a most primitive stage. At the beginning of the cultivation of a plant its wild variant is still most intensely gathered, and this may result in the extinction of the latter. Probably this was the end of the wild "ancestor" of maize, and so Zea mays also became one of the cultivated plants. Let us now see some examples indicating the way towards plant cultivation ; some of them are actually taken from my own observations (Arizona, California, Nevada). The Havasupai Indians (Arizona) know two sorts of wild tobacco. Both species are growing wild on the Arizona plateaus. Often the tobacco species are also "cultivated". The mesquite-tree is cut down and burnt, and the tobacco seed is thrown into the ashes without loosening the soil. Among other Indian tribes of Arizona and California this "plant cultivation" means only the burning of the wild tobacco fields after the leaves are gathered, so as to increase the next year's yield. AL. KROEBER mentions that the Mohave Indians along the Colorado River are sowing the seeds of different grass species in the inundated soil, so that they blow out the seeds from their mouth. In this case the Mohaves have realized that the plant grows better and yields a richer crop in the humid soil. Of course, the sown grass species are not looked after, only the consumable seeds are gathered. In 1966 I have also observed this primitive plant cultivation among the Mohave Indians. They scattered the seeds of a Panicum species on an area which was previously flooded by the Colorado River. They knew from experience that the seeds sown in the humid soil were growing thicker and the plants grew higher. The seeds of the Panicum species were not sown every year. If they had enough food, they did not sow but contented themselves with the seed stock they have gathered. A similar primitive plant cultivation is known among the Yuma Indians, who were sowing also the seeds