Page 1. Maize Ears Sculptured in 12th and 13th Century AD India as Indicators of Pre-Columbian Di... more Page 1. Maize Ears Sculptured in 12th and 13th Century AD India as Indicators of Pre-Columbian Diffusion 1 CARL L. JOHANNESSEN AND ANNE Z. PARKER 2 Evidence for the presence of maize (Zea mays, Poaceae) in India ...
American crop plants may have been present in Asia prior to Columbus's discovery of the New World... more American crop plants may have been present in Asia prior to Columbus's discovery of the New World. If they were, they would serve as indicators of contact between the New and Old World before the "European Age of Discovery." Since cultivated crop plants cannot be invented twice, if they are present on a continent not the home of the wild progenitors and if there is no possible manner of non-human seed dispersal, then they must have been carried by humans. If the crop germ plasm was transferred, it implies much cultural and technological information was probably also transferred. We need to know how the process of cultural advancement occurred. As one of the techniques to test the hypothesis, we conducted a search of the published records of the Asian region (Table ). We have reviewed the English translations of the literature of early India and have been assisted by graduate students in reading the medicinal and religious materials in their original languages (Arabic, Farsi and Chinese) for any inclusion of information on crop plants. We had already become familiar with enough of the economic botanists and natural historians to realize that they believed such contact did not occur and therefore, in the case of most species of American plants, that the crop plants could not have been in the Old World (
Page 1. Maize Ears Sculptured in 12th and 13th Century AD India as Indicators of Pre-Columbian Di... more Page 1. Maize Ears Sculptured in 12th and 13th Century AD India as Indicators of Pre-Columbian Diffusion 1 CARL L. JOHANNESSEN AND ANNE Z. PARKER 2 Evidence for the presence of maize (Zea mays, Poaceae) in India ...
American crop plants may have been present in Asia prior to Columbus's discovery of the New World... more American crop plants may have been present in Asia prior to Columbus's discovery of the New World. If they were, they would serve as indicators of contact between the New and Old World before the "European Age of Discovery." Since cultivated crop plants cannot be invented twice, if they are present on a continent not the home of the wild progenitors and if there is no possible manner of non-human seed dispersal, then they must have been carried by humans. If the crop germ plasm was transferred, it implies much cultural and technological information was probably also transferred. We need to know how the process of cultural advancement occurred. As one of the techniques to test the hypothesis, we conducted a search of the published records of the Asian region (Table ). We have reviewed the English translations of the literature of early India and have been assisted by graduate students in reading the medicinal and religious materials in their original languages (Arabic, Farsi and Chinese) for any inclusion of information on crop plants. We had already become familiar with enough of the economic botanists and natural historians to realize that they believed such contact did not occur and therefore, in the case of most species of American plants, that the crop plants could not have been in the Old World (
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