🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <5oorrh$bnh$1@trends.ca>,
  yuku@mail.trends.ca (Yuri Kuchinsky) wrote:
>
>
> Greetings, all.
>
> Below you will find material dealing with the history of the earliest
> domestication of bottle gourd (Lagenaria), based on the work of Prof.
> Lathrap. I've posted most of this before in assorted posts. I thought this
> is relevant since Bernard is interested in this subject.
>
[major snip]

Interesting that after chiding me for using old references, Yuri, uses
Lathrap's paper published in 1977 as his major source. Yuri does not,
after I have several times cited, point out that Charles Reed the editor
of the volume where Lathrap's paper appeared did a summary and conclusion
article in which he explictly disagreed with Lathrap on Lagenaria. Thus,
Lathrap's theory was not accepted even when it was proposed.

Yuri then cites Roosevelt (1995) and Charles Heizer (1990) but does not
provide the actual citations so that it is impossible to check them. It
may be that Yuri is citing Heizer's *Seeds to civilization* 2nd edition.
The first edition (San Francisco:W.H. Freeman 1973, p. 175) is not as
wishy-washy as Yuri would have us believe, " Some people have thought
that man may have been responsible for its wide dispersal in early times,
but since it has been shown that the gourds can remain in sea water for
long periods without damage to the seeds, it perhaps more likely that its
wide distribution is to be explained as the result of oceanic drifting of
the fruits."

Another contemporaneous review (H.G. Baker, 1970. *Plants and
civilization* Belmont: Wadsworth, p. 50) says, " ... it sems unlikely
that persons making transoceanic voyages would load their boats with such
bulky, nearly inedible fruits. Consequently, the calabash probably cannot
be used as an example of a species whose presence on both sides of the
Atlantic ocean speaks in favor of cultural contacts between the
hemispheres in ancient times."


Yuri cites Lathrap:

      "These considerations leave me with a most reluctant
      acceptance of the third alternative as the most
      probable: that a viable group of fishermen made the
      canoe voyage from western Africa to eastern Brazil
      bringing with them not only the bottle gourd and the
      leguminous fish poisons (Quigley 1956), but also the
      African linted cotton, _Gossypium herbaceum_ L., var.
      _africanum_. (pp. 726-7)"

But as I posted here-- Cotton hybridized Old World and New World species
to create the long-linted polyploidal species at least a million years
ago so that Lathrap is wrong on this plant, native fish poisons with
saponins are used all over the New World so that Lathrap is also wrong
here. 2 out of 3 so far.

Yuri updates by citing Anna Roosevelt (whose work is not universally
accepted) 1995 (but I cannot check the original citations)  "Having the
earliest known American pottery in tropical  lowlands at the eastern edge
of South America fit  neither the Japanese fishermen theory nor the
Andean	invasion theory but was consonant with independent  invention or
Lathrap's African origins hypothesis. (p.  116)."<

<
<
Yuri concludes:
"Anna Roosevelt makes the following critique of Lathrap in her
article:

      ... Lathrap's idea that pottery-using horticultural
      people from Africa came into the Amazon at 13,000 years
      ago does not fit the fact that there is absolutely no
      pottery in the 11,200- to 9,800-year-old Paleoindian
      site. (p. 129)

True. But all we need to do here is bring Lathrap's dates closer to the
present. Lathrap's theories are not graven in stone. His is simply a
hypothesis that can be improved like any other."

A couple of points:

Roosevelt herself is not citing Lathrap accurately. In his article
Lathrap was trying to explain gourd remains in Peru that were 13,000
years ago so that his presumed trip had to be older. He actually proposed
that Lagenaria arrived 16,000 years ago or earlier. Thus the discrepancy
between his dates and Roosevelt is even greater. Lathrap's proposals are
even more outrageous. He proposes that Lagenaria was domesticated 40,0000
years ago. This is tens of thousands of years before any other of the
well documented plants like wheat, barley, or rice. No anthropologist
will agree with this. Humans at this time were all hunter-gatherers and
not domesticating anything.

Another point that makes me very suspicious about either the quote or
Roosevelt's qualifications. Hunter-gatherers do not make pottery. We do
know that Jomon culture was making pottery in the period concerned which
is why Meggers Valdivia contact was originally even considered-- it has
now been pretty well discredited. However, exactly where in Sub-Saharan
Africa was there a culture that was making pottery 16,000,  13,0000, or
9000 years ago? So why would our poor benighted South Americans be taught
how to make pottery by some hypothetical African?

Please, Yuri-- provide complete citations

Bernard Ortiz de Montellano

-------------------==== Posted via Deja News ====-----------------------
      http://www.dejanews.com/     Search, Read, Post to Usenet