Squash domestication
Domesticación de la calabaza (Cucurbita pepo)
- Date
- c. 8000 BCE · confidence high
- Place
- Guilá Naquitz Cave, Oaxaca, Mexico
- Credited to
- Archaic gatherer-horticulturalists of Oaxaca
- Field
- Life & health
What it is
Domestic-sized squash seeds and peduncles, the oldest cultivated plant in the Americas, predating maize by several millennia. It served as a container, an oilseed and a food.
The bottle gourd (Lagenaria) reached the Americas already domesticated from Asia, c. 8000 BCE, carried by people.
What it led to
- The start of Mesoamerican horticulture and the maize-bean-squash triad (milpa)
- Plant containers predating pottery in Mesoamerica
- Proof that American domestication was independent and early
Built on
- Wild squash gathering
- Digging stick