[Home]
[Full version]
Gourds brought to the Americas from Asia
Dec 13 ,General Science
A Harvard University genetic study suggests ancient humans brought bottle gourds to the Americas from Asia some 10,000 years ago.
The thick-skinned bottle gourds widely used as containers by prehistoric peoples were likely brought to the Americas by people arriving from Asia, according to the genetic comparison of modern bottle gourds with gourds found at archaeological sites in the Western Hemisphere.
The finding solves a longstanding archaeological mystery by explaining how a domesticated variant of a species native to Africa ended up millennia ago in places as far removed as modern-day Florida, Kentucky, Mexico and Peru.
The work -- a collaboration of anthropologists and biologists from Harvard, the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History, Massey University in New Zealand, and the University of Maine -- appears this week online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Copyright 2005 by United Press International
Related stories:
Ancient humans brought bottle gourds to Americas from Asia
Thick-skinned bottle gourds widely used as containers by prehistoric peoples were likely brought to the Americas some 10,000 years ago by individuals who arrived from Asia, according to a new genetic comparison of modern bottle gourds with gourds found at archaeological sites in the Western Hemisphere. The finding solves a longstanding archaeological enigma by explaining how a domesticated variant of a species native to Africa ended up millennia ago in places as far removed as modern-day Florida, Kentucky, Mexico, and Peru.
Crop scientists discover gene that controls fruit shape
Crop scientists have cloned a gene that controls the shape of tomatoes, a discovery that could help unravel the mystery behind the huge morphological differences among edible fruits and vegetables, as well as provide new insight into mechanisms of plant development.
[Home]
[Full version]