Maize domestication grows older in Mexico
By Bruce Bower
Inhabitants of southern Mexico began to cultivate maize, the major grain crop of prehistoric societies in the Americas, by at least 6,300 years ago, a new study finds. This is around 800 years earlier than previous estimates.
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Radiocarbon dates for minute samples taken from two maize cobs converge on the older age, according to a report in the Feb. 13 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Archaeologists excavated both cobs in 1966 at Guilá Naquitz Cave in Mexico’s southern highlands. The specimens are now housed in a Mexican museum.