The Path to Domesticated Plants

The Path to Domesticated Plants. The Relationship between people and plants is profoundly import. , Long before domesticated maize and beans were introduced into the Southeast, Indians of Arkansas had begun tending and caring for native plants., The archeological record of Arkansas demonstrates that by 3000 years ago, people's use of some native plants had triggered their transformation from wild resources to fully domesticated crops. Archeologist sometimes refer to these domesticated are extinct and cultivated plants as the "Eastern North American Crop Complex. , , Plum Bayou people relied on their ancestor's crops, just as we prepare and eat foods our parents or grandparents have passed down to us. , By studying changes in shape and sizes of plant parts, like sump weed paleoethnobotanists can identify plants, transformed from resources to crop plants. , Today, domesticated versions of these South Eastern crops are extinct but their wild progenitors can still be found.