People living in the lowlands of what’s now southwestern Ecuador began to grow squash between 10,000 and 9,000 years ago, about the same time that residents of Mexico’s southern highlands domesticated the vegetable (SN: 5/24/97, p. 322), according to a study in the Feb. 14 Science.
The comparably ancient roots of plant cultivation in these two regions indicate that “in South America, there was no single center of agricultural origins,” conclude Dolores R.
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