Σ(ﾟдﾟ;)

Plant materials and dried feces, or coprolites, were remarkably well preserved and abundant, for the ancient inhabitants of these rockshelters had only scanty notions of hygiene. The diet was heavy in vegetable foods, some of which came from domesticated plants. Earliest of all is the bottle gourd; this appeared by about 6500 BC. It is even older in the Archaic period of Oaxaca and is thus with squash the most ancient cultigen of the New World, present – probably as a domesticate – by 6000 BC. The history of the bottle gourd, usable only as a container since the meat is inedible, is now known through ancient DNA analysis of archaeological specimens. This plant is definitely of Old World origin, with an initial center of domestication in Africa. By 7000–6000 BC it had reached East Asia. Early and entirely unfounded speculation had suggested that the bottle gourd might have been carried to the New World by African voyagers at this early date, but the molecular evidence makes it certain that the Lagenaria siceraria of the New World arrived here from Asia, presumably across the Bering Strait.