Author: Matthew Taub / Source: Atlas Obscura
Quinoa, it turns out, has been trendy for 3,000 years. A cache of about 140,000 charred seeds has been discovered in Brantford, Ontario—further north than examples of the species from this period have ever been found.
The discovery was made back in 2010, when archaeologists were assessing a construction site that has since become a housing development. The work was routine, part of a legislative mandate in Ontario to dig into lands being developed both publicly and privately. So while the land is obviously archaeologically bountiful, no one expected any of the finds to be so, well, groundbreaking—often, in such a loaded area, they’re just part of the furniture. “It’s the first time I’ve been close to being shocked in 45 years of research,” said Gary Crawford, an archaeologist at the University of Toronto, to Yahoo! News. Crawford is the lead author on a study of the seeds, published last month in American Antiquity.
The seeds were found in an excavated pit alongside stone tools dating to the Meadowood, or Early Woodland, period, between…
The post Found: Really, Really Old Quinoa appeared first on FeedBox.