Scientists connect climate change, origins of agriculture in Mexico

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Cores from Laguna Tuxpan in Mexicos Iguala Valley provided evidence for maize and squash cultivation along its edges by 8000 B.P. and for the major dry event between 1800 and 900 B.P. Credit: Ruth Dickau
Cores from Laguna Tuxpan in Mexico's Iguala Valley, provided evidence for maize and squash cultivation along its edges by ~8000 B.P. and for the major dry event between 1800 and 900 B.P. Credit: Ruth Dickau

New charcoal and plant microfossil evidence from Mexico’s Central Balsas valley links a pivotal cultural shift, crop domestication in the New World, to local and regional environmental history. Agriculture in the Balsas valley originated and diversified during the warm, wet, postglacial period following the much cooler and drier climate in the final phases of the last ice age. A significant dry period appears to have occurred at the same time as the major dry episode associated with the collapse of Mayan civilization, Smithsonian researchers and colleagues report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences online.



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