Potato domestication
Domesticación de la patata
- Date
- c. 5500 BCE · confidence low
- Place
- Lake Titicaca altiplano, Puno, Peru
- Credited to
- Hunter-horticulturalists of the Andean altiplano
- Field
- Life & health
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
Selection of low-toxicity wild Solanum tubers in the highlands around Lake Titicaca, together with the freeze-drying technique (chuño) using frost and sun. A high-altitude crop that feeds dense populations where maize cannot grow.
Remains from Tres Ventanas (Chilca, c. 8000 BCE) and Ancón are disputed; genetics places the origin north of Titicaca around the 6th–4th millennium.
What it led to
- High-altitude agriculture and the demography of the central Andes
- Storage of chuño for years, the logistical basis of Tiwanaku and the Inca
- After 1570, a European demographic revolution driven by the potato
Built on
- Digging stick
- Wild tuber gathering