According to a study published in the journal Science Advances, corn cultivation was essential for the subsistence and development of large villages inhabiting the Cerrado – Brazil’s savanna biome – between the 9th and 17th centuries. The research, led by archaeologists from the University of São Paulo and supported by FAPESP, reveals the subsistence strategies of these densely populated communities for the first time. They employed sophisticated land-use practices involving the cultivation of various species (polyculture), with a special emphasis on corn. Previously, scientists considered these communities to be either predominantly mobile hunter-gatherers or monoculture farmers.
In addition to contributing to our understanding of the history of human influence on one of the most biodiverse tropical savannas on the planet, the study sheds light on the food production and land use strategies that shaped the landscapes of the Cerrado as we know them today.
The study also highlights the importance of the biome in understanding the biotechnological innovations used by pre-colonial indigenous Brazilian societies, such as adapting corn to the environmental conditions of the Brazilian savanna, which differ greatly from the plant’s place of origin. Previous research had already addressed the characterization and dispersal of corn in Latin America, showing that it arrived in Brazil via the southwestern Amazon rainforest at least 6,000 years ago. It originated in Mexico, where it first appeared 9,000 years ago, and was subsequently spread to other regions.
The conclusions of the study are based on the analysis of minute chemical variations preserved in human bones and teeth. This analysis made it possible to identify the types of plants and other foods consumed, providing a sort of “record” of diet throughout life.
“I often say that humans are what they eat, and that’s recorded in the chemical composition of their bones and teeth. Through that, we were able to identify corn consumption comparable to that of Mayan or Andean populations – something completely unexpected in this context. We also detected variability between two distinct societies, that is, archaeological traditions with markedly different diets, corroborating social and cultural diversity,” Eliane Chim, a researcher at the University of São Paulo’s Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology (MAE-USP) and the lead author of the article, which is part of her doctoral dissertation, told Agência FAPESP.
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