Free Republic

A unique confluence of archeology, molecular genetics and serendipity guided a collaboration of Mexican and Penn State researchers to a deeper understanding of how modern corn was domesticated from teosinte, a perennial grass native to Mexico and Central America, more than 5,000 years ago.There is much interest in how ancient agriculturists transformed the wild grass teosinte into modern corn, one of the most important and successful crops on earth, according to team leader Jonathan Lynch, distinguished professor of plant nutrition. For decades, his research group in the College of Agricultural Sciences has been uncovering how roots play a critical role...

An unexpected discovery by an Iowa State University researcher suggests that the first humans may have arrived in North America more than 30,000 years ago – nearly 20,000 years earlier than originally thought. Andrew Somerville, an assistant professor of anthropology in world languages and cultures, says he and his colleagues made the discovery while studying the origins of agriculture in the Tehuacan Valley in Mexico. As part of that work, they wanted to establish a date for the earliest human occupation of the Coxcatlan Cave in the valley, so they obtained radiocarbon dates for several rabbit and deer bones that...