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Squash was domesticated first, followed by maize and then beans, becoming part of the Three Sisters agricultural system of companion planting. [ 98 ] [ 99 ] The English word "squash" derives from askutasquash (a green thing eaten raw), a word from the Narragansett language , which was documented by Roger Williams , the founder of Rhode Island ...
The process to develop the agricultural knowledge of crop domestication took place over 5,000–6,500 years in Mesoamerica. Squash was domesticated first, with maize second and then beans being domesticated, becoming part of the Three Sisters agricultural system of companion planting. [11] [12]
Like maize, squash also was domesticated once then spread through trade, but other crops appear to have been domesticated multiple times by different groups of Mesoamerican peoples. [26] Squash (Cucurbita pepo) was domesticated by 8000 BCE based on dated squash remains found in Guilá Naquitz. [29]
Cucurbita galeottii (ch'ako') is a wild form of squash with round or pear-shaped fruits similar to small bottle gourds, with a green skin and white/yellow stripes. Ch'ako is found along lowland roadsides of southern Mexico. The fruit is tough skinned and bitter, but the young greens are eaten boiled. [8]
Corn, beans and squash were domesticated in Mesoamerica around 3500 BCE. Potatoes, quinoa and manioc were domesticated in South America. In what is now the eastern United States, Native Americans domesticated sunflower and sumpweed around 2500 BCE. [11]
One of the oldest fossil cucurbits so far is †Cucurbitaciphyllum lobatum from the Paleocene epoch, found at Shirley Canal, Montana. It was described for the first time in 1924 by the paleobotanist Frank Hall Knowlton. The fossil leaf is palmate, trilobed with rounded lobal sinuses and an entire or serrate margin.
The process to develop the agricultural knowledge for cultivation took place over a 5,000 to 6,500 year period. Squash was domesticated first, with maize second and beans third. [21] [22] Squash was first domesticated some 8,000–10,000 years ago. [23] [24]
In 1988, the Israeli botanist Daniel Zohary and the German botanist Maria Hopf formulated their founder crops hypothesis. They proposed that eight plant species were domesticated by early Neolithic farming communities in Southwest Asia (Fertile Crescent) and went on to form the basis of agricultural economies across much of Eurasia, including Southwest Asia, South Asia, Europe, and North ...