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Published online on April 10, 2007, 10.1073/pnas.0701425104
PNAS | April 17, 2007 | vol. 104 | no. 16 | 6870-6875


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ANTHROPOLOGY
Microfossil evidence for pre-Columbian maize dispersals in the neotropics from San Andrés, Tabasco, Mexico

Mary E. D. Pohl*,{dagger}, Dolores R. Piperno{dagger},{ddagger},§, Kevin O. Pope, and John G. Jones||

*Department of Anthropology, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306; {ddagger}Archaeobiology Program, Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Washington, DC 20560; §Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Balboa, Republic of Panama 0843-03092; Geo Eco Arc Research, P.O. Box 78, Garrett Park, MD 20896; and ||Department of Anthropology, Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99164

Contributed by Dolores R. Piperno, February 21, 2007 (received for review December 26, 2006)

The history of maize (Zea mays L.) is one of the most debated topics in New World archaeology. Molecular and genetic studies indicate that maize domestication took place in tropical southwest Mexico. Although archaeological evidence for the evolution of maize from its wild ancestor teosinte has yet to be found in that poorly studied region, other research combining paleoecology and archaeology is documenting the nature and timing of maize domestication and dispersals. Here we report a phytolith analysis of sediments from San Andrés, Tabasco, that confirms the spread of maize cultivation to the tropical Mexican Gulf Coast >7,000 years ago ({approx}7,300 calendar years before present). We review the different methods used in sampling, identifying, and dating fossil maize remains and compare their strengths and weaknesses. Finally, we examine how San Andrés amplifies the present evidence for widespread maize dispersals into Central and South America. Multiple data sets from many sites indicate that maize was brought under cultivation and domesticated and had spread rapidly out of its domestication cradle in tropical southwest Mexico by the eighth millennium before the present.

phytoliths | pollen | paleoecology | radiocarbon

Author contributions: M.E.D.P., D.R.P., and K.O.P. designed research; D.R.P., K.O.P., and J.G.J. performed research; D.R.P. analyzed data; and M.E.D.P., D.R.P., and K.O.P. wrote the paper.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/0701425104/DC1.

** The suggestion that maize moved into northern South America shortly before 4,000 cal BP, based on phytoliths recovered from a small sample of early fourth millennium BP pottery from Ecuador (63), is unsupportable in light of the accumulated data.

{dagger}To whom correspondence may be addressed. E-mail: mpohl{at}mailer.fsu.edu or pipernod{at}si.edu

© 2007 by The National Academy of Sciences of the USA


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