Domestication of the potato, quinoa and Andean camelids
- Date
- c. 8000–4000 BCE
- Category
- Economy & trade
- Region
- Andes (South America)
- Era
- Prehistory
- Significance
The high Andes became an independent centre of domestication, producing crops and animals adapted to extreme altitude.
Tubers of the potato (Solanum) were gathered very early and the domesticated potato was well established by around 5,000 years ago, eventually diversifying into thousands of frost- and altitude-tolerant varieties. The grain-like seed crop quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa) was being harvested by roughly 7,500 years ago. Uniquely in the Americas, Andean peoples also domesticated large herd animals: the llama (from the guanaco) and the alpaca (from the vicuña) appear in the archaeological record as domesticates by about 7,000–6,000 years ago. Llamas provided pack transport and meat, while alpacas yielded fine wool, and both supplied dung used as fuel and fertiliser. This distinctive package of high-altitude tubers, hardy grains and camelid herding fuelled the emergent social complexity of the Lake Titicaca Basin and underwrote later Andean states culminating in the Inca Empire.
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Related economy & trade events
- Domestication of cattle, sheep, goats and pigs in Southwest Asiac. 8500–7500 BCE
- Clay tokens, seals and the threshold of writingc. 5500–3400 BCE
- The Secondary Products Revolution: wool, traction and transportc. 3500–3000 BCE
- Hatshepsut's expedition to the Land of Puntc. 1469 BCE
- Meluhha: Indus Trade with Akkadian Mesopotamiac. 2400-2300 BCE
- Old Assyrian trade network and the karum of Kaneshc. 1950–1750 BCE
Further reading
The wider story
The Silk Roads: A New History of the World
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