New research published this week by University of New Mexico archaeologist Keith Prufer shows that a site in Belize(伯利兹) was the origins of the ancient Maya people and the spread of maize(玉米) as a staple food.
Prufer and his colleagues excavated(挖掘) 25 burial sites dating from 10,000 to 3,700 years ago from two cave or rock shelter sites located in the remote Maya Mountains of Belize, Central America. These sites were located below the cliffs that sheltered the people living below and protected the deposits of the everyday debris and burials of the dead for over 7,000 years.
“We see the migration of these people as fundamentally important for the development of farming and, eventually, large Maya speaking communities,” Prufer said, noting that maize provided essential protein and sugar energy, and could be stored in a dry place. Once people had a reliable source of food in maize, they tended to farm and stay in one place, leading to larger, established communities.
Maize wasn’t always an important part of the diet of these people, Prufer said. The earliest migrants likely gathered and ate the tiny cobs(玉米棒) of a grass known as teosinte, as well as the earliest domesticated maize, along with other plants, shellfish, and games(野味). By selecting the biggest and best seeds, they began to domesticate the plant, increasingly changing the landscape and biodiversity, a process that likely occurred largely in South America.
Eventually the consumption of maize grew until it became a diet staple, much like the Europeans used wheat, Prufer said. The dispersal of maize grew, moving from the south, northward to the Maya population, and eventually across both continents so that when the Spanish arrived around 1500 AD, maize, or corn, was a staple of every Native American group’s diet.
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