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. 2001 Feb 13;98(4):2101-3.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.98.4.2101.

The earliest archaeological maize (Zea mays L.) from highland Mexico: new accelerator mass spectrometry dates and their implications

D R Piperno  1 , K V Flannery
Affiliations

The earliest archaeological maize (Zea mays L.) from highland Mexico: new accelerator mass spectrometry dates and their implications

D R Piperno et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .

Abstract

Accelerator mass spectrometry age determinations of maize cobs (Zea mays L.) from Guilá Naquitz Cave in Oaxaca, Mexico, produced dates of 5,400 carbon-14 years before the present (about 6,250 calendar years ago), making those cobs the oldest in the Americas. Macrofossils and phytoliths characteristic of wild and domesticated Zea fruits are absent from older strata from the site, although Zea pollen has previously been identified from those levels. These results, together with the modern geographical distribution of wild Zea mays, suggest that the cultural practices that led to Zea domestication probably occurred elsewhere in Mexico. Guilá Naquitz Cave has now yielded the earliest macrofossil evidence for the domestication of two major American crop plants, squash (Cucurbita pepo) and maize.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Map of Mexico showing the location of Guilá Naquitz Cave and the Tehuacán Valley, together with the modern distribution of the populations of Zea mays ssp. parviglumis from the Central Balsas River Valley, the molecular profiles of which suggest that they are ancestral to maize.
Figure 2
Figure 2
The two oldest maize cobs in the New World from Guilá Naquitz Cave. The cob at the bottom is from excavation square D10 and is about 2.5 cm long. The cob at the top is from square C9.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment in

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