Maize Took Root in Peru’s Andes 1,000 Years Earlier Than Thought

Maize was grown and eaten by people in the Peruvian Andes about 1,000 years earlier than previously thought, researchers said Wednesday.

Maize, or corn, was first used in Mexico about 10,000 years ago. Although researchers knew it had migrated to South America, exactly when it was domesticated there was poorly understood.

“This is the earliest use of maize in this region of the Andes,” said Linda Perry of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington.

“We have good evidence they were growing the plants on-site and that they were processing it into flour,” she added.

The scientists were looking for plant remains to determine the diet of the people who lived in the area long ago when they discovered microscopic grains of maize, potato and arrowroot on the floor of a circular stone house and on grinding tools in the settlement of Waynuna, dating back 3,600 to 4,000 years.

“Our results extend the record of maize by a least a millennium in the southern Andes,” said Perry, who reported the findings in the current issue of the journal Nature.

“They show on-site processing of maize into flour and provide direct evidence for the deliberate movement of plant foods by humans from the tropical forest to the highlands.

“These data confirm what many archeologists have suspected for a long time.”