Quinoa domestication
Domesticación de la quinua
- Date
- c. 3000 BCE · confidence low
- Place
- Lake Titicaca basin, Puno, Peru
- Credited to
- Archaic peoples of the altiplano
- Field
- Life & health
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What was discovered
Selection of Chenopodium quinoa, a pseudocereal tolerant of frost, drought and salinity, with high-quality protein. Together with the potato, it sustained agricultural life above 3,800 m.
Thin-coated seeds, a marker of domestication, appear around 1500 BCE at Chiripa; selection began earlier, but the dates are uncertain.
What it led to
- high-altitude agriculture
- the food base of Tiwanaku and the Incas
- its global cultivation in the 21st century