1st Farm in Eastern U.S. Grown for Taste, Not Hunger?
Three thousand eight hundred years ago, long before U.S. plains rippled with vast rows of corn, Native Americans planted farms with hardy “pioneer” crops, according to new evidence of the first farming in eastern North America.
Because the area appears to have been well stocked with wild food sources, the discovery may rewrite some beliefs about what led people to start farming on the continent, scientists say.
Rather than turning to farming as a matter of survival, the so-called Riverton people may have been exercising “free will” and engaging in a bit of gastronomic innovation, archaeologists say.
I would expect that there’s some selective factor driving the adoption of domesticates rather than simple environmental stresses. I generally tend towards the Rindos school of thought that views “agriculture” as having rudiments in most societies and only becoming a major part of the diet when it becomes selectively advantageous to do so. Some (Hayden up at UBC, I believe) has argued that competitive feasting played a role in places where environmental stresses were not a factor, such as the Pacific NW where salmon and other marine resources were abundant.
UPDATE: Here’s an explanation of Hayden’s competitive feasting.
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