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Re: maize in ancient india: strong transpacific links are indicated

Yes, Kay, pollen deposits would do very nicely. Why such a high
standard? Do you always hold out for 100% convergence notions or are you 
open to plausible diffusion facts?

Is there less than 100% aprior proof that appeals to your scientific
self? Anthropology and archaeology both accept many ideas within their
limited scopes that do not stand up to outside review. The first one that 
comes to my mind is the silly unproven macro notion of the Bering Straits 
and land bridge migrations - boats should have been first on the migration 
list long ago.

I cried a few years ago to personally to see the otherwise beautiful 
anthropological museum in Mexico City and its outer courtyard Bering 
Straits mural. Contrasted with the blank faces of native Mesoamericans 
from every Mexican State and the "beautiful' racist blue eyes and full 
facial feaures of Conquistadores the Bearing Strait motiff is another 
sad Conquistadore symbol.

The native Mesoamericans should be the focus of the museum, all with
human eyes, full of color and beauty. Weak 'facts' like the Bering
Strait mural should also come down and replaced with hard fact!

Milo Gardner
Sacramento, Calif.

On 28 Dec 1996, Kay Lancaster wrote:

> In article <59ua4m$na4@news1.io.org>, Yuri Kuchinsky quoted:
> > 
> >      ...the size and shape of "ears" in husks, partly husked or
> >      entirely dehusked; the proportional shapes of "kernels" that
> >      are normally wider than thick; the expansion of the "kernel"
> >      adjacent to the missing "kernel"; the smaller sized "kernels"
> >      at the tip; one tip with undeveloped, tiny "kernels" and the
> >      bottom four-fifth normal; the normality of parallel rows over
> >      tessellate row conditions or tessellate "kernels" at the base
> >      and parallel rows in the middle and tip of the "ear";... (p.
> >      178)
> 
> The pictures I've seen are not convincing to me, although they do
> strongly resemble some types of sorghum (Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench),
> an old world grain closely related to maize, long cultivated in India.
> Cf variability in JD Snowden's 1936 _The Cultivated Races of Sorghum_, 
> (Adlard and Sons, London).  Occam's razor.
> 
> Show me some maize *tassels* with the supposed "ears", and I'll
> gladly reconsider.  Or pollen deposits, or physical remains that
> can be accurately dated.
> 
> Kay Lancaster    kay@fern.com  
> 
> 
>
References: