By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Life Science Weekly -- Conventional wisdom holds that prehistoric villagers planted corn, and lots of it, to survive the dry and hostile conditions of the American Southwest.

But University of Cincinnati archaeology professor Alan Sullivan is challenging that long-standing idea, arguing instead that people routinely burned the understory of forests to grow wild crops 1,000 years ago.

“There has been this orthodoxy about the importance of corn,” said Sullivan, director of graduate studies in UC’s Department of Anthropology in the McMicken College of Arts and Sciences. “It’s been widely considered that prehistoric peoples of Arizona between A.D. 900 to 1200 were dependent on it.

“But if corn is lurking out there in the Grand Canyon, it’s hiding successfully because we’ve looked …

CITATION: (2017-12-12), Archaeologist says fire, not corn, key to prehistoric survival in arid Southwest, Life Science Weekly, 453, ISSN: 1552-2474, BUTTER® ID: 014822173

From the newsletter Life Science Weekly.
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