Rainforest foragers intensified plant use long before agriculture

[GreatGazoo]

1. There is a great bit in the journal of some New England pilgrims

in which they are blissfully unaware of permaculture. It says something like:

'These people know nothing of agriculture and spend their days doing whatever they please. Fortunately God has blessed them with an abundance of grapes, raspberries, blueberries (on and on)... that grow wild in cleared land.'

The people of what became New England included Taino who brought their permaculture techniques up with them from the Amazon. We now know that corn was selectively bred about 11,000 years ago. How they kept it from cross pollinating back toward teosinte (the wheatlike grass) is unknown. Corn is about 20% of all the calories that all the agriculture in the world produces now.