Science Mag Podcast covered this as well... with Madeleine McLeester, assistant professor in the department of anthropology at Dartmouth College.
I thought interesting that they have yet to find the village that associates with the gardens.
https://www.science.org/content/podcast/farming-maize-ice-ag...
Fields where Native Americans farmed a thousand years ago discovered in Michigan
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Re: Fields where Native Americans farmed a thousand years ago discovered in Michigan
#62[flagged]
Re: Fields where Native Americans farmed a thousand years ago discovered in Michigan
#63For anyone else confused about the three sisters and why they weren't mentioned in the article, it's a reference to this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Sisters_(agriculture)
Was the article edited? I don't see a reference to the phrase "three sisters" on it, it just says "corn, beans, and squash." Did the original headline mention it?
No, not in the archived version: https://web.archive.org/web/20250612153046/https://www.smith...
Oh, was this mentioned in the original HN title? Has that been edited?
Yes, it was. https://web.archive.org/web/20250615154352/https://news.ycom...
Original HN title was "1k year old 3 sisters crop farm found in Northern Michigan"
I really wish that when titles were edited there was some history, it would make it much easier to understand these little discussions based on the original title.
Re: Fields where Native Americans farmed a thousand years ago discovered in Michigan
#64The unanswered questions are intriguing. I wonder if the crops grew better because they were suited to the climate, but those crops aren’t around anymore? Could they have cultivated varieties of corn over say 1000 years that grew well at that latitude and in the relative cold? Or could there have been warmer micro climates? Maybe not. Even corn specifically developed for my area in British Columbia needs a very warm…
You'd be surprised but the "landraces" e.g. historic geographically constrained cultivars tend to do better than modern cultivars in certain geographical regions. A modern even GMO cultivar might have a couple of beneficial traits introduced over the course of a few decades of work. Whereas a landrace might have been selected for yield in that area for a thousand years or more, maybe 100x or more as many generations…
It doesn't take many generations for selective breeding to show improvements in landraces. Even just making sure that volunteers from seeds that were thrown out as food waste were given a chance to fruit and seed starts that process.
One of the more interesting sources of landraces can be found in local seed saving programs, such as ones hosted by local libraries. They are more likely to be viable seeds that is adapting to the local conditions.
Re: Fields where Native Americans farmed a thousand years ago discovered in Michigan
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pottery of the time was low-fired and did not generally reach vitrification, and it was not glazed with a silica-based glaze that would seal it. So over time this pottery would absorb water. And especially low-fired bits could totally break down. Source: amateur ceramicist, and I have first-hand experience with cone 6 clay (vitrifies at 1200c) bisc-fired to cone 04 (1060c) and crumbling to bits when left in water too…
to add some context, in modern gardening things like crushed vermiculite are a common soil amendment. being a porous absorbent mineral, it serves the same purpose.
Not to mention terracotta is a very common material for potted houseplants and container gardening. Terracotta is low-fired, non-vitreous and porous to water, giving it nice breathability and water absorption characteristics.
There are also long-necked terracotta bottles (called ollas) you can buy (or DIY) which you bury in the ground. You fill the bottle with water and the terracotta itself acts as a wick, providing a slow release continuous underground water source for plants to access.
Re: Fields where Native Americans farmed a thousand years ago discovered in Michigan
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're all overthinking it. They dumped their kitchen waste in the fields, and it happened to contain broken pottery too. It's the same for other archeological sites all over, many are waste dumps that contain interesting objects.
How would you characterize this distinction? It sounds like you're simply describing the same behavior.
Intentional vs incidental?
Re: Fields where Native Americans farmed a thousand years ago discovered in Michigan
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
According to graphs I’m seeing, it looks like it was warmer for a period, but then cooler until now. They would have been farming here during a cool period. It’s entirely possible that they established the farm thousands of years ago when it was warm (and warm means about the same temperatures as today), then kept farming throughout the ‘little ice age’ despite crops yielding less. Perhaps that’s what triggered such…
What graphs are you seeing? This is what the article says: > Radiocarbon dating suggests the ridges [farming furrows or similar] were initially constructed roughly 1,000 years ago. They were maintained and used for 600 years after that. Wikipedia says this: > Erik Thorvaldsson (c. 950 – c. 1003), known as Erik the Red, was a Norse explorer [...] > Around the year of 982, Erik was exiled from Iceland for three years,…
> The NASA Earth Observatory notes three particularly cold intervals. One began about 1650, another about 1770, and the last in 1850
Re: Fields where Native Americans farmed a thousand years ago discovered in Michigan
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
That natives did not colonize Europe or China does not mean they were not highly skilled with plants. What kind of argument are you making?
I think they were just engaging in time-honored speculation about how different history could’ve been had a few historical accidents changed. For example, the Mayan civilization collapsed about 500 years before the Spanish showed up due to the worst drought in something like 7k years, so people have speculated about what Mesoamerica might have looked like when contact was made of those millions of people hadn’t died.…
The "immune system lottery" is really why the native Americans were doomed.
They could have caught up with the technology etc and stood their ground. But when 90% of the population dies at or before first contact, the remaining 10% doesn't have a chance.
Pretty sure this would have beaten the Mayas even if they were at the top of their game.
It's pretty wild how world history turned on such a random and completely unknown factor.
Re: Fields where Native Americans farmed a thousand years ago discovered in Michigan
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
What graphs are you seeing? This is what the article says: > Radiocarbon dating suggests the ridges [farming furrows or similar] were initially constructed roughly 1,000 years ago. They were maintained and used for 600 years after that. Wikipedia says this: > Erik Thorvaldsson (c. 950 – c. 1003), known as Erik the Red, was a Norse explorer [...] > Around the year of 982, Erik was exiled from Iceland for three years,…
> The NASA Earth Observatory notes three particularly cold intervals. One began about 1650, another about 1770, and the last in 1850 Are these due to volcanic eruptions?
Why do you ask? I'm not familiar with any such theory. Krakatoa erupted in... 1883, which doesn't seem like a good match. And volcanic winters don't seem to last much more than 10 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanic_winter#Past_volcanic_...
There is a theory that the Little Ice Age was precipitated by the reforestation of land in America as the natives died off from exposure to European diseases. And of course, there's always the theory that it's just something that happened.
Re: Fields where Native Americans farmed a thousand years ago discovered in Michigan
#70> During their excavations, the scientists also found several artifacts, including charcoal and fragments of broken ceramics. These discoveries suggest that the area’s Indigenous farmers may have dumped their household waste and the remnants of fires onto their fields, using them as compost. Samples taken from the mounds suggest the farmers enriched the dirt with soil from nearby wetlands. Exciting - that sounds a lo…
I wouldn't have imagined broken pottery could serve as compost, how is that made possible? It's clay but it retains some properties even after baking?
It could just be incidental, some broken pottery unintentionally mixed into fire ash that was intentionally spread on a field.