Ancient society studied Excavations in South America show pre-Inca people used corn for popcorn and corn flour
LINDELL BEACH, B.C. — People who lived along the coastal regions of Peru were eating popcorn 1,000 years earlier than previously recorded.
In fact, they were chewing corn kernels and popping them in campfires even before pottery had been invented.
“These people were pre-Inca coastal people,” said Tom Dillehay with Vanderbilt University’s anthropology department in Nashville.
“They were mainly maritime foragers who built earth-stone mounds, but probably had exchange contacts with lots of people along the coast from the north to the south.”
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Dillehay and Duccio Bonavia of Peru’s Academia Nacional de la Historia led a research group to excavate sites at Paradones and Huaca Prieta, where they found the oldest known corn cobs, husks, stalks and tassels dating from 6,700 to 3,000 years ago. They also found corn microfossils, including starch grains and phytoliths.
Some of the characteristics of the cobs, the earliest ever discovered in South America, indicated that the ancient people ate corn in a variety of ways, including popcorn and corn flour.
The archaeological sites are located on Peru’s arid northern coast, although historically the climate of the site has been variable.
“(Back then) it would have been just as arid, but there were wetter moments too,” said Dillehay. “A fairly large population was in the area.”
Huaca Prieta is a large artificial mound that had been originally excavated in the 1940s.
The recent excavations by Dillehay and Bonavia revealed remains of room structures, human burials, many stone, textile, and wood artefacts, animal remains, plants and cultigens, which are plants that have been deliberately altered or selected by humans. The artifacts were carbon dated from 13,700 to 3,800 years ago.
The Paredones mound is one kilometre north of Huaca Prieta, with similar cultural deposits dating between 6,700 and 4,000 years ago.
The archaeologists recovered 293 corn remains from the sites, plus 43 other specimens that had been damaged in the past.
The remains of the corn discovered at the sites “represent one of the largest and most morphologically diverse collections of well preserved early (corn) specimens available for study,” the authors wrote in a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Corn was a small component of the ancient people’s diet, which included fish, shellfish, seaweed, sea lions, wild plants, squash, beans, chilli peppers and other cultigens.
Dolores Piperno, curator of New World archaeology at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and emeritus staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, said corn was first domesticated in Mexico nearly 9,000 years ago from a wild grass called teosinte. Today corn ranks among the world’s most important domestic crops.
“Our results show that only a few thousand years later, corn arrived in South America, where its evolution into different varieties that are now common in the Andean range began,” said Piperno.
“This evidence further indicates that in many areas, corn arrived before pots did and that early experimentation with corn as a food was not dependent on the presence of pottery.”
Dillehay said pottery actually appeared in Peru about 4,500 years ago and was probably used for cooking larger portions of food.
“Corn probably was traded and/or it migrated from Mexico through to Central America to Peru,” he said.
It’s challenging to understand the transformations in the characteristics of corn cobs and kernels that led to the hundreds of corn types known today, as well as where and when each one of them developed or were cultivated.
Corn cobs and kernels do not preserve well in the hot, humid forests of Central and South America and the trading routes of the Panama.
“These new and unique races of corn may have developed quickly in South America, where there was no chance that they would continue to be pollinated by wild teosinte,” said Piperno.
“Because there is so little data available from other places for this time period, the wealth of morphological information about the cobs and other corn remains at this early date is very important for understanding how corn became the crop we know today.”
Dillehay said wild teosinte does not grow as far south as Peru. Corn had likely lost its teosinte traits by the time it arrived in that country, he added.
The paper noted that the archaeological remains confirm a long and diverse history of corn in northern Peru’s Andean region that can be traced to at least 6,775 to 6,504 years ago. This is the oldest date for corn fossils in South America and is in line with ancient corn cobs found in Mexico’s Guila Naquitz Cave dated to 6,200 years ago.
In considering the development of corn as a food, the paper suggested that improvements in corn productivity were easier for ancient farmers to achieve when hybridization with teosinte could not occur because the Peruvian region was outside the natural range of the wild grass.
However, the researchers’ findings have contributed to knowledge of the early diffusion of corn and agriculture and offer wider implications for understanding the development of early pre-industrial human societies.
- DENT: As the white to yellow kernels mature, they become indented. This commonly grown corn is used for oil, cereals and flour as well as animal feed. Because of a high cellulose content, it can been used to create biodegradable plastics and absorbent material for diapers. The oil is used in cosmetics, soaps and skin care products.
- FLINT: The kernels are hard and come in all colours. It is used for similar purposes as dent corn.
- POPCORN: is characterized by a hard outer skin and soft starchy centres. This combination gives it its popability.
- SWEET or VEGETABLE CORN: Delicious eaten straight off the cob because of its high sugar content. Best enjoyed fresh because storage will slowly turn the sugars into starch.
- WAXY CORN: This variety has a waxy appearance and is used mainly in the Far East for its tapioca-like starch. It is used as a stabilizing and thickening agent for food products and for animal feed.
