Re: Ancient Americas bottle gourd discovery

In sci.archaeology.mesoamerican message
news:4977-439FB4B8-874@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx by
Topiltzin-2091@xxxxxxxxx . . . :

Let me try this one more time for sci.arch (seems I'm having trouble
spelilng arcaheology todya).

>
> Ancient humans brought bottle gourds to the Americas from Asia
> Plants widely used as containers arrived, already domesticated,
> some 10,000 years ago
>
> CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Dec. 13, 2005 -- Thick-skinned bottle gourds
> widely used as containers by prehistoric peoples were likely
> brought to the Americas some 10,000 years ago by individuals who
> arrived from Asia, according to a new genetic comparison of
> modern bottle gourds with gourds found at archaeological sites
> in the Western Hemisphere. The finding solves a longstanding
> archaeological enigma by explaining how a domesticated variant
> of a species native to Africa ended up millennia ago in places
> as far removed as modern-day Florida, Kentucky, Mexico and Peru.
> The work, by a team of anthropologists and biologists from
> Harvard University, the Smithsonian Institution's National
> Museum of Natural History, Massey University in New Zealand and
> the University of Maine, appears this week on the web site of
> the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
> Integrating genetics and archaeology, the researchers assembled
> a collection of ancient remnants of bottle gourds from across
> the Americas. They then identified key genetic markers from the
> DNA of both the ancient gourds and their modern counterparts in
> Asia and Africa before comparing the plants' genetic make-up to
> determine the origins of the New World gourds.
> "For 150 years, the dominant theory has been that bottle gourds,
> which are quite buoyant and have no known wild progenitors in
> the Americas, floated across the Atlantic Ocean from Africa and
> were picked up and used as containers by people here," says
> Noreen Tuross, the Landon T. Clay Professor of Scientific
> Archaeology in Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences. "Much to
> our surprise, we found that in every case the gourds found in
> the Americas were a genetic match with modern gourds found in
> Asia, not Africa. This suggests quite strongly that the gourds
> that were used as containers in the Americas for thousands of
> years before the advent of pottery were brought over from Asia."
> The researchers say it's possible the domesticated gourds --
> differentiated from wild bottle gourds by a much thicker rind --
> were conveyed to North America by people who arrived from Asia
> in boats or who walked across an ancient land bridge between the
> continents, or that the gourds floated across the Bering Strait
> after being transported by humans from their native Africa to
> far northeastern Asia. "This finding paints a new picture of the
> founding of the Americas," says co-author Bruce Smith of the
> Smithsonian Institution. "These people did not arrive here
> empty-handed; they brought a domesticated plant and dogs with
> them. They arrived with important tools necessary to survive and
> thrive on a new continent, including some knowledge of and
> experience with plant domestication." Thought to have originated
> in Africa, bottle gourds (Lagenaria sicereria) have been grown
> worldwide for thousands of years. The gourds have little food
> value but their strong, hard-shelled fruits were long prized as
> containers, musical instruments and fishing floats. This
> lightweight "container crop" would have been particularly useful
> to human societies before the advent of pottery and settled
> village life, and was apparently domesticated thousands of years
> before any plant was domesticated for food purposes.
> Radiocarbon dating indicates that bottle gourds were present in
> the Americas by 10,000 years ago and widespread by 8,000 years
> ago. Some of the specimens studied by the team were not only the
> oldest bottle gourds ever found but also quite possibly the
> oldest plant DNA ever analyzed. The newest of their
> archaeological samples, a specimen found in Kentucky, was just
> 1,000 years old -- suggesting the gourds were used in the New
> World as containers for at least 9,000 years. ###
> Tuross and Smith's co-authors on the PNAS paper are David L.
> Erickson of the National Museum of Natural History, Andrew C.
> Clarke of Massey University and Daniel H. Sandweiss of the
> University of Maine. Their work was supported by the Smithsonian
> Institution and the National Museum of Natural History and by
> Harvard's Department of Anthropology and Peabody Museum of
> Archaeology and Ethnology.  
>
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>
> Mike Ruggeri's Ancient America and Mesoamerica News and Links
> http://community-2.webtv.net/Topiltzin-2091/MIKERUGGERISANCIENT
>
> Mike Ruggeri's Maya Archaeology News and Links
> http://community-2.webtv.net/Topiltzin-2091/MIkeRuggerisMaya
>
> MIKE RUGGERI'S MOUND BUILDERS/ ANCIENT SOUTHWEST NEWS AND LINKS
> http://community-2.webtv.net/Topiltzin-2091/MIKERUGGERISMOUND
>
> Ancient America, Mesoamerica and Andean Museum Exhibitions,
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> http://community-2.webtv.net/Topiltzin-2091/AncientAmerica
>
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> http://community.webtv.net/Topiltzin-2091/MikeRuggerisAndean
>



--
Philip
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