Agriculture and Textiles in the Americas (Twelve) - Climate, Clothing ...

Moving now to the Americas, there were two early agricultural transitions – in Mexico and Peru – and both led to the rise of civilizations. Agriculture began at the end of the last ice age, although the shift to agriculture in the New World was more gradual than in Southwest Asia and China. As was the case elsewhere, much of the human diet was still supplied by hunting and gathering. Aside from domesticated dogs – which had followed the first human immigrants from Siberia – early domesticated animals were limited to wool-bearing camelids, llamas, and alpacas (in Peru and Bolivia). Mexico and Peru both witnessed the cultivation of fiber crops for textiles at an early stage with two different varieties of cotton, domesticated independently in the two regions, and another fiber crop in Mexico: maguey.1
Maize and Maguey in Mexico
To begin with Mexico, archaeologists are mystified by the limited evidence for America’s main food crop: maize (corn); it now seems maize did not play a leading role in the Mesoamerican transition to agriculture. Given that it is now one of the world’s major food crops, the absence of maize in early Mexican agriculture is quite amazing. The first food crops in Mexico include a few varieties of edible gourds (squash and pumpkins) around 10,000 years ago. Maize begins to appear 9,000 years ago, and the common bean follows later, around 3,000 years ago. Even by 5,000 years ago, maize was only partially domesticated.2
Feeding People and Animals
Civilization in the region began with the Olmecs 3,000 years ago followed by the Mayans, then the Aztecs. These state societies developed after a relatively late transition to a sedentary lifestyle – late compared to Southwest Asia and China. Pottery and the loom weaving of textiles begin to appear between 4,000 and 3,000 years ago and the settlements attracted wild fowl, with two species domesticated as commensals: the turkey and Muscovy duck. People consumed dogs and rabbits as well as fowl, and these animals were typically fed with maize. Wild animals (especially deer) continued as major meat resources, but dogs were more popular on the menu from 5,000 years ago. Dog skins were sometimes used in garments too, and one unusual dog breed developed around 2,000 years ago was the Mexican hairless dog (called the Xolo). Rabbits were also kept and fed on maize from around 2,000 years ago, probably for fur as well as meat. Some bird species – notably tropical parrots such as the brightly colored scarlet macaw – were bred for their feathers, fed on maize, and even exported to the North American southwest.3
Near modern Mexico City is the ancient city of Teotihuacan, built nearly 2,000 years ago. Some of the wild animals and birds that figured prominently as cultural icons were kept in captivity, although not domesticated. Isotope studies from the skeletal remains of jaguars, pumas, and eagles excavated by archaeologists inside the Sun and Moon Pyramids reveal these wild animals were fed with maize and probably (in the case of the felines) with maize-fed rabbits – and also with the hearts of maize-fed human captives.4
Maguey and Mesoamerican Clothing
Textiles in Mexico were woven mainly with fibers extracted from cactus-like plants called maguey, which belongs to the agave family. More than a hundred varieties were used in Mexico, and these served many purposes besides supplying fiber for clothes. Before the spread of maize, people in western Mexico relied heavily on agaves for food, and the plants were used also as fodder. Agaves are adapted to dry conditions, storing water in their succulent leaves as a sap that can be drunk fresh as a sweet liquid. The juice is fermented into alcoholic beverages known as pulque, which can be distilled as tequila and mescal; the psychedelic mescaline comes from a similar Mexican cactus.
Maguey fiber is sometimes called sisal hemp, but sisal actually refers to a tougher fiber from one variety used mainly for ropes and matting. The softer varieties are ideal for clothes and were probably woven throughout Mesoamerica from an early stage. Only some species were domesticated – including a few used for fiber and a couple for alcohol – but many more were cultivated, without changing much from their wild forms. Thanks to the dry climate, maguey fibers and cordage are preserved at archaeological sites from around 9,000 years ago. The oldest occurs at a site in Honduras where maguey is present throughout a long series of occupation phases spanning from 10,000 to 1,500 years ago; the earliest maguey fibers there are radiocarbon-dated to 9,000 years ago.5
78.Maguey farm, Mexico
From early in the Holocene, textile fibers from a variety of cactus-like agaves were used to make everyday clothes in Mexico. The main fiber plants were various varieties of maguey, which was cultivated extensively before the mid-Holocene. Other varieties were exploited mainly for food and also for their sap, a drink that can be processed for alcoholic beverages. Subsequently overshadowed by cotton as the main textile fiber in Mexico, domesticated varieties of agave are now grown mainly for tough sisal fibers and to make alcohol, especially tequila. Shown here is a plantation of blue agaves (Agave tequilana) in the hills of Oaxaca, Mexico.
Source: flowerphotos / Alamy Stock Photo.
Maguey was cultivated in the settlements from 4,000 years ago and, judging from the number of spindle whorls, textile production increased in the first civilizations. Maguey was often grown along with maize in terraced irrigation systems in the highlands, and cotton became popular too. The spindle whorls come in two sizes: larger ones for maguey and smaller ones for spinning the finer cotton fibers. Cloth played an important economic role in these complex societies and functioned as a kind of currency, with surplus cloth paid by villagers as tax to the state. Cotton was more valuable than maguey – like the situation in China where silk was more valuable than hemp.6
Compared to Peru, the ready availability of maguey might have delayed the widespread cultivation of cotton. The earliest cotton in Mesoamerica dates to 5,000 years ago, and by then the cotton plants were already domesticated.7
Double Trouble in South America
In comparing food and fiber as causes of agriculture, of all the regions around the world that can serve as a test, this is the best. In South America the transition from hunting and gathering involved both plants and animals. What makes South America pivotal is that in both instances, the transition to agriculture involved textile fibers.
Cotton was one of the first South American crops along with peanuts, beans and squash – but not corn. In northern Peru, cotton was cultivated by 8,000 years ago and cotton yarn has been preserved in archaeological deposits from around 7,000 years ago; cotton textiles dyed with indigo blue are dated to around 6,000 years ago. We saw earlier that the world’s oldest textile fabrics – woven with wild plant fibers 11,000 years ago – are found in Peru. Not only was cotton one of the founding crops, in Peru, cotton was often a focus of early agriculture and its cultivation was a driving force in the emergence of civilization. With cotton we can hardly doubt that its fiber was the main motive – cottonseed and the edible oil were not likely the products in question.8
Cotton in Peru
Early cultivation of crops in South America happened mainly along the coast in the northwest, in the region that stretches from Ecuador to Peru. Food crops were involved from 10,000 years ago and chili peppers were domesticated by 6,000 years ago. Maize entered the picture around 5,000 years ago – when it was consumed by dogs as well as people in the settlements. The first maize occurs 8,000 years ago at some sites, but it was not a significant aspect of the early agriculture; nor was maize a staple food in the early civilizations. Like the situation with rice in China, archaeologists are perplexed to see how this great cereal crop played such a minor role in the Peruvian transition to agriculture.9
But cotton is the big shock. Cotton often dominates the agriculture, while the main industry in the settlements was weaving textiles – to make fishing nets as well as fabrics for clothes. At sites that span the period leading up to the first civilizations, cotton was often the main crop. One well-studied site is Huaca Prieta on the northern coast of Peru, where cotton yarn is dated to around 7,000 years ago.10
Most stunning is the site of Caral, located 200 km (125 miles) north of the modern capital Lima. Caral is a ceremonial complex built in the desert not far from the coast, and archaeologists have unearthed an impressive irrigation system to support the crops. With a date of nearly 5,000 years ago, Caral is now claimed as the first city in the Americas – indeed it is one of the first cities in the world. Not only was cotton the main crop, but the whole city was sustained economically by cotton textiles. In fact, the agricultural base for this first American city was not food but textiles. The residents’ food supply came mainly from marine resources, which were traded for textiles (including nets) with fishing communities on the coast.11
The discovery of Caral and how its economy revolved around cotton has created a furor among archaeologists. Caral seems to raise questions about agriculture arising as a way to feed people, and it raises doubts about the role of the food economy in the emergence of civilization. Some remarkable textiles have been preserved in the dry climate, including an almost complete dress woven with cotton. We see a similar picture at another early city in Peru, El Paraíso (built around 4,000 years ago). Again, cotton was the dominant crop.12
An expert on the Incas and their forebears is Professor Michael Moseley at the University of Florida, and he highlights this astonishing evidence about how agriculture was based on textiles rather than food. Caral is a challenge to conventional assumptions and, as he says, it is “demanding of explanation.”13
79.City of Caral, Peru
In the Supe Valley near the coast of Peru is the city of Caral – at nearly 5,000 years old, one of the oldest cities in the world. Agriculture in the vicinity was dominated by cotton, with virtually no food crops. The people of Caral relied for their food on hunting and gathering and, especially, trading cotton for fish with nearby coastal populations – where cotton was used in fishing nets as well as clothes.
Source: age fotostock / Alamy Stock Photo.
Llamas and Wool in the Andes
The South American evidence is telling not just with plants but also with animals. While domestic animals did not feature prominently in American agriculture, there is one exception in the Andean highlands. In this high mountain region where the climate is cooled by altitude even in tropical zones, we find an independent transition to farming in the form of herding animals. The transition was unusual in a few ways: it was not connected with a sedentary lifestyle, nor did it involve cultivating any crops. Likely reasons relate to local ecology: cultivating permanent pasture to feed animals – or people – was not feasible at the elevations inhabited by native camelids (above 3,000 m). Instead the animals were kept on a mobile basis, with people moving along with the herds as the animals grazed on natural pastures. Two species – llama and alpaca – were domesticated from their wild parents, the guanaco and vicuña. These wild camelids were hunted (and possibly herded) from early after the ice age, when they replaced wild deer as the dominant animal remains found at archaeological sites. Skeletal changes that identify the domesticated species are visible by 6,000 years ago.14
Unlike the surreal situation with wild sheep where the presence of wool is often disputed (and discounted as a reason for domestication), there is no disputing the presence – and the value – of wool in the wild camelids, both guanaco and vicuña.15
Wool from the guanaco is like cashmere, and vicuña wool is the world’s most valuable natural fiber. So we can safely assume that the first American animal domesticates could provide people with wool for textiles – because both of the wild progenitors obviously produce wool. During historical times, llamas have served more as multipurpose assets – as beasts of burden and to supply meat as well as wool – whereas alpacas were always kept mainly for fiber. Wool fibers – probably from the fleece of guanaco – have now been found at archaeological sites between 10,000 and 9,000 years ago. So even at that very early time when people were hunting wild camelids for meat, they were collecting the wool.16
80.Llama, Peru
Llama at Machu Picchu, Peru. The two wild species of South American camelids – guanaco and vicuña – grow excellent wool, and both species were domesticated by humans in the Andean highlands before the mid-Holocene. Along with cultivation of cotton in coastal areas of Peru and Ecuador, the two domesticated animal species – llama and alpaca, respectively – represent an independent fiber-based transition to agriculture.
Source: Efrain Padro / Alamy Stock Photo.
The quality of woollen fiber has actually deteriorated since the Spanish invasion in the sixteenth century. At that catastrophic time the camelid population – along with the indigenous human population – was decimated by up to 90 percent. Modern-day wool varieties in Peru result from poorly controled breeding and hybridization since then. Archaeologist Jane Wheeler has examined the fibers on llama and alpaca mummies in southern Peru that were buried around 1,000 years ago. Her findings show that the wool in preconquest herds was superior to the wool of present-day domesticates (including alpacas). Not only was alpaca wool at that time better but so too was the llama wool, and she suggests that along with alpacas, llamas were bred mainly for their wool.17
As in Mesoamerica to the north, textiles played a big role in the rise of South American civilizations. Textiles sustained the first cities on the coast and the same is true in the Andes. Early highland settlements and regional states – culminating with the Incas – developed with the integration of coastal cotton and highland wool economies via expanding trade networks. Textile goods were the top commodity, sometimes woven with blends of cotton and woollen fibers. Long caravans of llamas carried their heavy loads through steep mountain passes, stopping at way stations where the textiles and other goods were traded. Archaeologists have found skeletal signs of pathology reflecting years of physical stress in the foot bones of the llamas. These complex Andean economies also produced a range of new food crops such as potato, and maize was adopted (eventually). Maize later became more important in the human diet and was fed to domestic animals as well, not only llamas but dogs and then guinea pigs. The latter is a little rodent that started out as a commensal species, attracted by all of the litter in the settlements; domesticated guinea pigs were fattened on maize and consumed for meat.18
Domesticating the Amazon
Trade across the Andes stretched not just to the western coast but to the east, where agriculture developed in the Amazon basin from around 7,000 years ago. We like to think that before Europeans arrived and spoiled things, the Amazon was a pristine wilderness inhabited by hunter-gatherers (naked or nearly naked). But recent archaeological finds have revealed that many indigenous populations were cultivating plants of various kinds from at least midway through the Holocene. They still relied heavily on wild plants and animals, and we now realize that many of these early agriculturalists (not just in the Amazon but elsewhere) engaged in low-level food production as a stable economic strategy. Some were semisedentary and horticultural, growing mixed domestic crops and wild plants in garden plots which they would abandon on a periodic basis. One of the main food crops first domesticated in the Amazon was manioc, of which there are a number of varieties like cassava.19
Cotton had spread into the Amazon basin from Peru and Ecuador, possibly via Colombia, and cotton is still grown by some remote tribal groups in Brazil. Clothing generally was minimal in these hot and humid climates – often nothing more than a woven waistband for women and a penis string for men.
Most of these South American societies were egalitarian, but some developed more hierarchical social structures, which American archaeologists refer to as chiefdoms. By 3,000 years ago, there were quite complex societies in parts of the Amazon – so-called mound builders. Most of the mounds started out as natural formations in the landscape, with people adding to the mounds as they built houses – and as refuse accumulated in the settlements. Excavations have unearthed elaborate pottery vessels and other ceramic artifacts including spindle whorls, testifying to a textile industry. Fabrics and items such as strings and ropes were woven from wild plants as well as cultivated cotton (and bark cloth as well); a few textile fragments have been recovered by archaeologists on the large island that lies in the mouth of the Amazon, Marajó Island.20.
Thanksgiving in North America
Before leaving the Americas, another independent center of agriculture has been discovered by archaeologists in recent decades, in the eastern woodlands region of North America. Beginning around 5,000 years ago, it was a relatively late starter, and at least three new plant species were domesticated – marshelder, chenopod, and sunflower. Seeds of other plants have been found at some of the earliest agricultural sites but without any physical signs of domestication, although these plants nonetheless may have been cultivated: these likely crops include erect knotweed, little barley, and maygrass. Squash was also among these domesticates, and it may have been the first plant to be domesticated in eastern North America. The presence of squash among the first North American domesticates might suggest that agriculture had spread northwards from Mexico, where squash was domesticated earlier, beginning around 10,000 years ago. However, evidence from genetic studies and archaeology points to an independent domestication of squash in eastern North America. All these crops were grown to feed people living in sedentary or semisedentary village societies – some were mound-building chiefdoms similar to those in the Amazon. As was the case in much of North America, the communities were Mesolithic rather than Neolithic or Paleolithic: neither settled farmers nor mobile hunter-gatherers, they were hunter-gatherers who settled down in villages and who sometimes started to cultivate crops. Neither were they naked: they wore clothes, including textile garments. Even when they had crops, they often relied mainly on wild foods, and their local environments were well-stocked with natural resources – for clothing as well as food. In those areas where agriculture was practiced more intensively, the local food crops were largely replaced by maize that had spread from Mexico by around 2,000 years ago.21
81.Map of USA showing sites and the eastern agricultural center
Major prehistoric and ethnographic clothing trends in the USA in relation to climate and early agriculture, with sites mentioned in the text.
82.10,000-year-old woven sandals from Oregon
Early textiles in North America include cordage dated from 12,000 years ago. Sandals made from twined sagebrush are dated from 10,400 years ago at Fort Rock Cave in Oregon. Shown here are sandals from (a) Catlow Cave, (b) Fort Rock Cave, and (c) Elephant Mountain Cave; (d) type drawing (slightly reduced scale).
As for textiles and clothes, weaving technologies were well-developed throughout North America. Archaeological remains of baskets, nets, ropes, and perhaps fabrics for garments are reported from sites dating back to around 12,000 years ago. At one of the earliest sites, Meadowcroft near Pittsburgh, a piece of cut bark that is probably from a basket fragment is dated to at least 15,000 years ago. In recent historical times, clothes were made from animal hides as well as textiles, and tools such as awls, scrapers, and needles are found at agricultural sites. Traditional fabrics included blankets woven from plant and animal fibers, and feathers too. Common plant fibers were yucca, nettles, milkweed, the local variety of hemp (dogbane, often called Indian hemp) and fibers from various tree barks and roots, while animal fibers came from wild mountain goats, moose, rabbits, and even woolly dogs. Among the Mesolithic Salish peoples who lived in the northwest around Seattle and Vancouver, a local variety of dog was bred with a dense woolly coat. The wool was woven into elaborately decorated blankets that functioned also as cloaks in winter. In some of the surviving examples at the Smithsonian Institution, the woolen fabric from dogs is held together by cedar bark cordage, sometimes supplemented with down and feathers. Along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, people made fabrics from the fibers of Spanish Moss, a flowering plant that grows over trees in humid climates. As mentioned earlier, one of the earliest North American textile finds is an 11,000-year-old sandal made from twined plant fibers, found at a cave in Oregon. Also mentioned earlier, a remarkable site for textiles is the Windover peat pond in Florida, which dates to around 7,500 years ago. On some of the skeletons in the Florida pond, archaeologists found fragments of finely woven fabrics that they think were probably worn as everyday clothes; the fibers in that case were extracted from the fronds of palm trees.22
83.7,500-year-old textile at Windover bog, Florida
7,500-year-old textiles are preserved at the Windover Bog site in Florida, including artifacts such as bags, blankets, and garments woven from various wild plant resources, including palm fronds. Some items comprised loom-woven cloths, and the assemblage demonstrates a range of complex weaving patterns.
So the transition to agriculture in eastern North America occurred in the context of sedentary, or semisedentary, peoples who were wearing technologically sophisticated clothes, including textiles woven from a host of wild fiber resources.23
Agriculture without Fibers?
Taken at face value, this transition to agriculture appears to refute the notion that textiles led to agriculture. It would seem that no fiber crop was domesticated, and neither were there any wool-producing domestic animals. But the evidence from North America presents another problem: it seems to refute all of the other theories as well. According to leading researcher Bruce D. Smith at the Smithsonian, the evidence seems to refute both social complexity (Hayden’s feasting model) and population pressure (Cohen’s argument). The North American evidence also fails to implicate major environmental stresses such as global climate change as possible causes for people to start cultivating these plants for food. With regard to the environment, the most that can be argued is that there was a mid-Holocene stabilization of the riverine floodplain systems that favored some of the plants involved and that created attractive resource zones for human settlements. These environmental changes might provide some kind of local explanation – Smith is skeptical of general theories about the origin of agriculture, and he prefers instead to construct local models.24
Yet this can lead to a limited and rather retrospective approach. Local environmental situations probably served more as a precondition rather than as a cause. After all, humans would have encountered favorable conditions and similar opportunities at many times and places during the past 300,000 years, without developing agriculture. Even in North America, regions such as California offered some excellent opportunities, but the people there did not start any agriculture.25
Smith mentions the presence of textiles (mainly basketry and cordage), but as he says, there is a big bias because these perishable materials are less likely than hard seeds to survive from so long ago, and this applies particularly with fragile clothing fabrics. Smith also points out that we tend to forget about another plant because it was not used for food, namely the bottle gourd (a variety of squash): this “utilitarian” domesticate reached eastern North America by 7,000 years ago where it served mainly as a container, and it is “frequently” present at the early agricultural sites. And Smith also points out that in the early days of agriculture in eastern North America, food from cultivated plants seems to have made only a small contribution to the human diet.26
Cultivated if Not Domesticated
Although we have only four or five plant species that were domesticated, others may have been cultivated but kept their wild forms. These wild plants could have been involved in the agricultural process, cultivated along with domesticated plants. Also, the sunflower was used for other purposes besides food. Sunflowers provided medicines and dyes (purple and yellow, for body paints and textiles), and sunflower seed oil was used ceremonially to “anoint” their heads; the stalks of sunflowers were used as a construction material and possibly for textiles.27
As we have seen, textiles and woven fabrics have survived at quite a few early sites in North America. One important site is the Newt Kash shelter in Kentucky, where a vast array of textiles has been recovered including fabrics, mats, strings, and ropes, along with domesticated plants. This site dates from a little over 4,000 years ago, which places it at a fairly early stage of agriculture in eastern North America. Crops cultivated at Newt Kash include sunflower, sumpweed, chenopod (goosefoot), maygrass, giant ragweed, bottle gourd (inedible squash), fleshy (edible) squash, maize, and tobacco.
Among the wild plants used for the textiles at Newt Kash were Indian hemp and milkweed, traditionally woven into cordage and cloth. Milkweed is a dual fiber source: the fine fibers from its seed are similar to cotton and can be spun into yarn to make cloth for garments, while tougher fibers from the stem can be used for making strings, ropes, and baskets. In eastern North America, fibers such as milkweed and Indian hemp were often thigh-spun without spindle whorls, which may account for a paucity of spindle whorls at archaeological sites.28
So we may have one or two fiber plants in the early agriculture that were not formally domesticated. At least one – milkweed – was collected as a wild plant around some of the settlements, and may have been cultivated. The same is probably true for Indian hemp and maguey-like yucca fibers and various nettles. Textile fibers were used not so much for clothing as for cordage and string, and as thread for sewing. In these climates where the winters get cold, people favored warm animal skins, which were worn loosely – and often minimally – in summer. Scraper tools are often found at the early agricultural sites, along with bone awls (made from deer and turkey bones), suggesting that preparation of animal skins was commonplace.
84.Native American woman weaving milkweed fibers
Milkweed fibers were used widely by Native Americans to weave cloth and other textiles. While not domesticated, wild milkweed may have been cultivated along with food crops in the agricultural center of Eastern North America (ENA), which developed nearly 5,000 years ago. Shown here is a Native American woman weaving milkweed at Plimoth Plantation, Plymouth, MA.
A couple of things to keep in mind are that this agricultural transition in eastern North America did not happen among mobile hunter-gatherers who were naked: it happened among people who were wearing clothes and who were settling down in villages. As we saw earlier, all the indigenous American populations are descended from ancestors who had complex clothing. Without such warm garments, they could not have reached the New World from northeast Asia at the end of the last ice age. And even as hunter-gatherers, in many places they were moving toward a sedentary lifestyle.
We saw earlier how a sedentary existence can favor agriculture by attracting certain animal species (like chicken and pigs), animals that then become domesticated of their own accord in the villages. A similar thing can happen with plants: the ones involved in eastern North America probably started out as weeds that grew around settlements. With the exception of the sunflower, nowadays most of the indigenous crop plants are regarded more as weeds than as crops (and they were all superseded by maize as a food crop). Even the sunflower may have started out as a humble weed in clearings around settlements. At some point, after collecting the seeds from wild plants in their surroundings, people probably began to actively plant the seeds and make more use of the sunflower as a food resource, leading to the plant’s domestication. The question is whether this would have happened had the plants not already become established around the settlements as weeds, through a passive, commensal process akin to how many animal species were attracted to human settlements.
Turkeys to the Rescue
As well as milkweed as a possible fiber crop, there is one other species to mention – not plant but animal. During historical times, the sunflower has been used mainly as food not for humans but for farm animals. The small seeds of the sunflower are a favorite feed for domestic fowl – sunflower is almost the quintessential chicken feed. As it happens, one of the main meat sources for the early farmers in North America was a native fowl – the wild turkey. These wild fowl were attracted to all the grasses that were cultivated in the clearings around the settlements – as happened with chicken and millet (and wild rice) in China. The big birds were valued not just as food but also for their feathers: turkey feathers are a feature of traditional American costume. And bird feathers offer good insulation in the cold – Native North Americans sometimes made elegant winter cloaks from turkey feathers.29
Which brings us to one last surprise. We saw how turkeys were domesticated in Mexico, where they were fed with maize. Yet archaeologists recently discovered that the wild turkey was domesticated in North America as well. Turkeys were domesticated by 2,000 years ago, and this was a separate event from the Mexican domestication. These North American domestic turkeys are found in the southwest, but genetic analyses suggest they were domesticated earlier and maybe they spread into the southwest from eastern North America.
A key finding comes from a site in Utah where it turns out that turkey was not a major item in the menu. Archaeologists were surprised to find that the domestic fowl was not a food staple. Instead they suspect it was kept and fed – with maize – for its feathers. Traditionally, turkey feathers in the region were woven into brightly colored feather blankets and into garments as well, with the fanciest feathers reserved for ceremonial dress. And in the Eastern Woodlands, women wove warm cloaks with turkey feathers.30
So with the turkeys there is good reason for thanksgiving: the only indigenous animal domesticate in North American agriculture was probably domesticated for its feathers, not for food.
78.Maguey farm, MexicoFrom early in the Holocene, textile fibers from a variety of cactus-like agaves were used to make everyday clothes in Mexico. The main fiber plants were various varieties of maguey, which was cultivated extensively before the mid-Holocene. Other varieties were exploited mainly for food and also for their sap, a drink that can be processed for alcoholic beverages. Subsequently overshadowed by cotton as the main textile fiber in Mexico, domesticated varieties of agave are now grown mainly for tough sisal fibers and to make alcohol, especially tequila. Shown here is a plantation of blue agaves (Agave tequilana) in the hills of Oaxaca, Mexico.
Source: flowerphotos / Alamy Stock Photo.
79.City of Caral, PeruIn the Supe Valley near the coast of Peru is the city of Caral – at nearly 5,000 years old, one of the oldest cities in the world. Agriculture in the vicinity was dominated by cotton, with virtually no food crops. The people of Caral relied for their food on hunting and gathering and, especially, trading cotton for fish with nearby coastal populations – where cotton was used in fishing nets as well as clothes.
Source: age fotostock / Alamy Stock Photo.
80.Llama, PeruLlama at Machu Picchu, Peru. The two wild species of South American camelids – guanaco and vicuña – grow excellent wool, and both species were domesticated by humans in the Andean highlands before the mid-Holocene. Along with cultivation of cotton in coastal areas of Peru and Ecuador, the two domesticated animal species – llama and alpaca, respectively – represent an independent fiber-based transition to agriculture.
Source: Efrain Padro / Alamy Stock Photo.
81.Map of USA showing sites and the eastern agricultural centerMajor prehistoric and ethnographic clothing trends in the USA in relation to climate and early agriculture, with sites mentioned in the text.
83.7,500-year-old textile at Windover bog, Florida7,500-year-old textiles are preserved at the Windover Bog site in Florida, including artifacts such as bags, blankets, and garments woven from various wild plant resources, including palm fronds. Some items comprised loom-woven cloths, and the assemblage demonstrates a range of complex weaving patterns.
Source: Adovasio et al., 2001:24. Reproduced with permission of SAGE Publications, and courtesy of James Adovasio.
84.Native American woman weaving milkweed fibersMilkweed fibers were used widely by Native Americans to weave cloth and other textiles. While not domesticated, wild milkweed may have been cultivated along with food crops in the agricultural center of Eastern North America (ENA), which developed nearly 5,000 years ago. Shown here is a Native American woman weaving milkweed at Plimoth Plantation, Plymouth, MA.
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