How it began
The Llanos de Moxos is a savanna of about 48,700 square miles in the Beni Department of Bolivia, in southwestern Amazonia. A study published in Nature in 2020, led by Umberto Lombardo of the University of Bern, found that people there were cultivating plants in the early Holocene. The team found evidence of manioc dated to about 10,350 years ago and squash dated to about 10,250 years ago. Maize appeared about 6,850 years ago.
Before it existed
The researchers concluded that the earliest inhabitants of southwestern Amazonia were not only hunter-gatherers. They may have arrived in the region already practicing a mixed economy. Before this study, four early centers of crop domestication were generally recognized: China, the Middle East, Mesoamerica and the Andes.
How it works
The savanna floods, and the landscape is dotted with earthworks, among them more than 4,700 artificial forest islands. The team mapped the islands by remote sensing, checked about 30 on the ground and showed that many may have served as planting areas. Because the climate destroys most organic remains and the plain has no stone, the evidence came from phytoliths, tiny mineral particles that form inside plants and keep a shape specific to the plant, taken from dated excavations and sediment cores.
What changed first
Manioc, squash, maize and other foods rich in carbohydrates, such as sweet potato and peanuts, probably made up most of the diet in the Llanos de Moxos, with fish and large herbivores as supplements. The study states that people profoundly altered Amazonian landscapes from the time they arrived.
What lasted
Researchers had long argued that southwestern Amazonia was a likely center of early domestication, because crops such as manioc, squash, peanuts and some chili peppers and beans are genetically close to wild plants that grow there. The 2020 study supplied archaeological evidence and confirmed the region as a fifth early area of plant domestication. The authors note lasting effects on the variety of habitats and on species conservation.
