WI California Natives Develop Agriculture ~3000 BCE

I stand corrected. The Owens Valley Paiute did use Cyperus Esculentus at two sites within 600 years of contact. However, it was not a major food resource used by the Paiute. The Paiute were a hunter-gathering level of culture with incipient horticulture at contact. The Owens Valley Paiute were in a great location for early agriculture. They were at an incipient stage for horticulture at contact.

Really, any group in a river/lake valley with developed horticultural techniques could have used chinampa types of field preparation. Water control structures in the form of dams, canals, weirs and bulkheads are easily adapted, once their utility is understood. This will require a certain level of community organization and sedentary settlement pattern.

You are incorrect, the endonym of the Owen Valley Paiute and their trade partners was literally tövusi-dökadö which translates to "nutsedge tuber eaters".

Pauite are not unified in their subsistence practices. Wadadökadö for example means "Wada Root and Grass-seed Eaters" and Kutsavidökadö means "Ephydridae (Brine fly) Larvae Eaters". These names also showcased the main products of their region that were used in trade networks through out the Sierras.
 
You are incorrect, the endonym of the Owen Valley Paiute and their trade partners was literally tövusi-dökadö which translates to "nutsedge tuber eaters".

Pauite are not unified in their subsistence practices. Wadadökadö for example means "Wada Root and Grass-seed Eaters" and Kutsavidökadö means "Ephydridae (Brine fly) Larvae Eaters". These names also showcased the main products of their region that were used in trade networks through out the Sierras.

This doesn’t disprove what @SwampTiger said about whether or not the Paiute as a whole were agriculturalists. This is just a neat bit of vocabulary that points to some subsistence practices. Fine.

You have a tendency to come into threads, dump random and only vaguely connected material, imply or outright state that other people aren’t researching the topics they are talking about (which you haven’t done here), and then disappear when asked to elaborate. So, if you would please elaborate on how the Paiute fit the traditional definition of sedentary agriculturalists, that would be excellent.
 
My knowledge on the topics I post on is what I have to offer. If someone critiques my posts without a counter paper or source it so does not in my mind warrant much attention or time because that was not given to me.

He was wrong about the crop not being native, he was wrong about the crop being introduced via the spanish and he is wrong about it not being a major crop.

The Northern Paiute are not unified in subsistence sources nor the intensification of said sources. I never stated all Paiute practiced agriculture or horticulture, but the Owens Valley populations did and they are a local california population that can be used as a model of riparian agriculture throughout california's valley.

My two references of "Tending the Wild" which talks about the emergence of food production systems on the west coast and the offer of googling "Owens Valley Pauite Agriculture" would have linked to

Agriculture Among the Paiute of Owens Valley
HARRY W. LAWTON, PHILIP J. WILKE, MARY DeDECKER and WILLIAM M. MASON
The Journal of California Anthropology
Vol. 3, No. 1 (SUMMER 1976), pp. 13-50



Now if you take the time to not be spoonfed and actually searched that and read it, you'd understand what I am about.

If you'd like I can just block you or you can do that to me if you don't like the fact I don't handhold you through a given topic because you being salty like these on these forum streets is so unnecessary.

I ain't gon' argue on here anymore.
 

SwampTiger

Banned
My statement stands. There were two sites with evidence of nutsedge/taboosa/chufa. The Paiute did not practice agriculture. They were on the edge of horticulture. The ditches dug by the Paiute are an early, inefficient and indiscriminate form of irrigation. No evidence exists to my knowledge of attempted modification of plants for specific traits.
 
Now if you take the time to not be spoonfed and actually searched that and read it, you'd understand what I am about.

If you'd like I can just block you or you can do that to me if you don't like the fact I don't handhold you through a given topic because you being salty like these on these forum streets is so unnecessary.

I ain't gon' argue on here anymore.

These two paragraphs demonstrate very poignantly what I’m talking about.

Now, as far as I’m concerned, blocking people is a waste of time because that will create a situation in which threads that the two of us are reading will have wide gaps in them. Furthermore, I would like to think that people on this forum can be civil, as I have seen on many occasions now as people try to be civil with you when you come into threads and behave rather abrasively.

Has it ever occurred to you that people might post questions on this forum that they don’t have the time to put proper research into themselves? They pose the questions hoping that, someone on the forum who has the time or is knowledgeable on the subject in question might be able to give them a hand? This isn’t “spoonfeeding” or “holding their hand”, rather, it’s polite. It is therefore very IMPOLITE when you waltz in and castigate people for not “doing. more. research” (as you recently put it in another thread) or just dropping in random and vague talking points, stating that people are “wrong” or “incorrect” and then disappearing with a poof.

People don’t like to be talked down to. You come across as a know-it-all. You appear to be very knowledgeable and good and resourceful, and that’s great. But knowledge is wasted when you keep it to yourself and talk down to others for not having it ;)
 
Does anyone know what wild species some of the modern domestic amaranths came from? I've been looking for awhile now and there's little info...
 
Does anyone know what wild species some of the modern domestic amaranths came from? I've been looking for awhile now and there's little info...
It's a large and common family so I wouldn't be surprised if hybridization was involved like it was with some of our modern crops.
 
It's a large and common family so I wouldn't be surprised if hybridization was involved like it was with some of our modern crops.

I agree but it's strangely difficult to find any information on it, really. There are only so many wild native Amaranthus species in North America, after all.
 
I imagine along the coasts, considering the importance of seaweed and the kelp forests as well as shellfish to the indigenous people IOTL, that mariculture for kelp and shellfish could be of hugeeeee importance.
 
interesting information, chia seeds were extensively used throughout California, and a different species of chia was a major source of calories for Mesoamericans. Similar to there being several species of wild amaranth, and domesticated varieties being incredibly important food crops.


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I'd need to dig it up again, but I had read a journal article that there's evidence that the maize cultivation along the lower Colorado River had spread to the coastal region as a result of drought-related displacement (including Lake Cahuilla's cycles) by the 1500s. So that's an automatic potential right there, although unless you can have such a spread on an earlier Lake Cahuilla cycle, it's more relevant to the New World in isolation, where the Old World never contacts them (or by ASB doesn't exist).

Any source on California arsenic copper ore? AFAIK most of the copper is in north eastern California and there were a few tin mines in LA and Riverside. Best place for a bronze age civilization in the US would be the Southwest. Arizona has the bulk of US copper deposits, with major mines near Tuscon. Meanwhile the only major American tin mine outside Alaska is at El Paso.

Continuing my previous response, arsenopyrite is very common in the PNW and California/Nevada and is blended in with copper sources there, especially in mines along the California/Nevada border (hence why it would be very interesting to see the Washoe or Paiute gaining dominance based on their metallurgical skills/trade in copper/tin/arsenical bronze. But what this means is that theoretically, there's a lot of places which could make arsenical bronze, although likely Northern California will be the main origin of them since in most of the PNW the arsenic content would be too low.

Native copper might be the bottleneck. It's most noted amongst American Indians for use amongst some Dene groups (Ahtna of Alaska and some NWT Dene called the Yellowknives), the Copper Inuit (NWT), and the Old Copper Culture (Michigan), but I'm unsure how much native copper was laying around in the California/Nevada area. Manipulation of native copper is usually cited as a prerequisite for smelting copper. Could be that you'd need one of those Dene groups to develop copper smelting to get the ball rolling on things, and preferably pretty early since Dene peoples migrated quite a bit OTL (like the Pacific Coast Athabaskans of Oregon/California).

This really needs to be a proper TL...

I'll get there sooner or later in my own TL (sure it's an imported development, but no one ever slights the Mississippians or Europeans for importing agriculture). But I'd love to see an indigenous Californian TL here, since there's a lot of potential (epic earthworks/waterworks, orchards of domesticated oaks, the sky's the limit), you just need to work around the inherent issues regarding droughts and flooding. And from what I've found, it's surprisingly easy to find good public domain/free sources about California Indians compared to many other American Indian groups. There's quite a few solid (and relatively recent, no older than the 50s/60s unlike other free sources, so it isn't just classic works by Franz Boas and such) ethnographic/linguistic works, including dictionaries floating around out there.

I imagine along the coasts, considering the importance of seaweed and the kelp forests as well as shellfish to the indigenous people IOTL, that mariculture for kelp and shellfish could be of hugeeeee importance.
Also makes good fertiliser, as the Irish will attest to. I like the Chumash especially since they were great sailors and could serve as a nice link to Mesoamerica and the PNW.

interesting information, chia seeds were extensively used throughout California, and a different species of chia was a major source of calories for Mesoamericans. Similar to there being several species of wild amaranth, and domesticated varieties being incredibly important food crops.


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Source on this? Any discussion/maps there of other California Indian plants?
 
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